Scientists Who Failed to Warn of Quake Found Guilty of Manslaughter 459
An anonymous reader notes that the BBC reports "Six Italian scientists and an ex-government official have been sentenced to six years in prison over the 2009 deadly earthquake in L'Aquila. A regional court found them guilty of multiple manslaughter. Prosecutors said the defendants gave a falsely reassuring statement before the quake, while the defence maintained there was no way to predict major quakes. The 6.3 magnitude quake devastated the city and killed 309 people." The scientists were first charged more than two years ago.
Misleading summary (Score:5, Informative)
They were found guilty not primarily for failing to predict the earthquake, but for releasing a statement saying there was probably not going to be one. They are accused of giving people a false sense of security resulting in them not taking necessary precautions.
Re:Misleading summary (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Misleading summary (Score:5, Interesting)
And if no earthquake had happened, they would have inevitably been accused of causin a panic. The lesson here is don't be a geologist in Italy.
Re:Misleading summary (Score:5, Interesting)
And if no earthquake had happened, they would have inevitably been accused of causin a panic. The lesson here is don't be a geologist in Italy.
Golly, guess what happened WRT THIS VERY SAME EARTHQUAKE?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_L'Aquila_earthquake#Prior_warning_controversy [wikipedia.org]
Basically A predicted a quake would strike based on multiple measurements, and got a judicial gag order and police breathing down his neck. Its bad for tourism, you know?
B was used as a weapon against A
Quake happens.
A writes papers, makes presentations, gets his gag order lifted, turns out he was correct after all. Whoops.
B gets a sound spanking today.
The real crooks are the cops and civil defense people, not the peons they used as weapons against the guy who correctly predicted the quakes. But they're above the law, so the peons get jail time instead.
In the end, too many people died, therefore either these guys were going to jail or Giuliani was going to jail. All things considered, they probably made the least wrong choice by sending these guys to jail.
As that radio dude used to say "... and now you know the rest of the story"
Re:Misleading summary (Score:5, Informative)
that radio dude
Paul Harvey
Re:Misleading summary (Score:4, Funny)
Whoa whoa whoa, are you actually insinuating that the Italian goverment is corrupt? How dare you sir
Re:Misleading summary (Score:5, Funny)
Whoa whoa whoa, are you actually insinuating that the Italian goverment is corrupt? How dare you sir
For a nominal fee to a certain benevolent society, the insinuation could be overlooked.
Re:Misleading summary (Score:5, Funny)
The lesson is to not ever go to italy at all, ever, no matter who you are. They have a judicial system that produces results that are clearly insane.
Re:Misleading summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Well – Italy is hardly the only country where that is so.
Re:Misleading summary (Score:5, Funny)
They have a judicial system that produces results that are clearly insane.
But they also make insanely great coffee, and have really nice shoes. It's not as simple as you make it out to be. You might end up in jail, but have you seen those uniforms? Fabulous.
Re:Misleading summary (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Misleading summary (Score:5, Informative)
The lesson is to not ever go to italy at all, ever, no matter who you are. They have a judicial system that produces results that are clearly insane.
Yes, Amanda Knox learned that lesson.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_Knox [wikipedia.org]
Re:Misleading summary (Score:4, Insightful)
The only thing Amanda Knox learnt is that with enough money you can buy your way out of jail in Italy just as well as other people can buy your way in.
Whether she's guilty or not is something that was never really determined to any great extent, because on one side you had a prosecution that was trying every trick in the book to make sure she went to jail over it, and on the other you had a massive American lobbying campaign with many millions of dollars poured into the idea that she was innocent.
There's still a hell of a lot of questions about her actions, but there's still a hell of a lot of questions about the prosecution.
One thing is for sure and that's that justice didn't happen in the Amanda Knox case. If she was guilty she got away with it, if she was innocent then her name has certainly not been cleared in the minds of many millions of people. In the US the lobbying campaign has her painted as a victim, but across much of Europe where the press was much more impartial because of an equal distaste of both the Italian and American actions in the case there still seems a pretty strong belief she's guilty.
The Italians and Americans have extreme opposing views on it because of the massively influential media campaigns, elsewhere people are far from convinced there was any just resolution either way.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Misleading summary (Score:4, Insightful)
She didn't confess, and her supposed false accusation of someone else was based on deceptive leading questions from interrogators. You know the sort of thing. The police ask people something like "help us figure" it out and to "imagine" how the crime might have happened, and suggest scenarios for them to fill in the blanks. Then they turn it around and call it a confession, or an accusation. The cellphone evidence is based on analysis of only call records by a police inspector, not by any sort of telecommunications expert. The inspector concluded that the cell phones were turned off solely because they didn't receive any texts or phone calls during a block of time, surrounding the murder (well into the next day, as a matter of fact). The police also arrested and successfully prosecuted someone else for the same murder. The prosecutor in the case was also convicted of abuse of power in another case. His conviction was eventually overturned and, under italian law, no-one is considered guilty until all appeals are exhausted. By that same principle, Amanda Knox also was never considered guilty under Italian law.
The lesson for peons (Score:5, Insightful)
When you lie for your bosses, save the evidence to make sure they fall with you, because bosses have no loyalty and they LOVE to send you to face the music.
The "scientists" in question seem to have massaged the figures, they weren't lying, they just weren't telling the absolute truth, someone hinted that someone would be pleased if their report said X, they said X and then Y happened and gosh, their bosses dropped them like the flunkies they were.
Life isn't a movie, if it was, this would have been a disaster movie and the boss would have died in some horrible way just seconds after claiming that what is obviously happening isn't happening.
But in real life, the underling takes the blame and the boss gets a promotion for finding the culprit and seeing that justice is done.
r.
Re: (Score:3)
Reminds me of a different Harvey—Keitel's character in National Treasure. "Somebody has to go to prison."
Maybe they should be in prison, I don't know the case details, but it seems odd that forecasters go to jail yet drillers and frackers whose activities most likely occasionally trigger quakes go on with business as usual.
Buildings Not Up To Code (Score:5, Informative)
The real crooks are the cops and civil defense people
Corrupt building inspectors were most likely the biggest issue. Newly constructed buildings were not built to code and came crumbling down. Of course, it's a lot harder to go after those guys than just blaming some scientists who were making reasonable predictions based on the available data.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/world/europe/08codes.html [nytimes.com]
Re:Misleading summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically A predicted a quake would strike based on multiple measurements...
A's prediction was pseudo-science. A's prediction was based on observations of radon gas emissions. He was an amateur seismologist, i.e., his science credentials are of the same integrity as that of ghost hunters or doctors who practice homeopathy. His crock "prediction" was bad for tourism, and though I believe that he should have the freedom to say whatever he believes, his statement was pseudo-science bollocks.
And for the record, the scientists who were charged for manslaughter were charged for a very specific statement. There had been many tremors leading up to the mainshock. The Civil Protection department stated, "minor shocks did not raise the risk of a major one. ...The scientific community tells me there is no danger because there is an ongoing discharge of energy." [nature.com]
The first sentence is not technically correct: "...minor shocks did not raise the risk of a major one." The simple answer is seismologists don't know when, if, or where a mainshock will occur. We can only guess. And the notion of anomalies in the background seismicity--anomalously low or high--has been tried for over a century. It doesn't work. Hindsight is 20/20, and some large events are preceeded by either more or less minor earthquakes, but we simply do not know of a reliable way to predict major earthquakes based on minor earthquakes. Some major earthquakes happen with no precursors. Some happen after minor earthquake swarms. Some happen after a period of low seismicity--i.e., the fault is "stuck" and building pressure. In other words, we cannot rule out that the increase in minor earthquakes is a precursor to a larger event, but we also cannot say with any certainty that it does foreshadow a major event. We can say very little based on earthquake swarms, and we certainly don't have time to study them in the six months that they occurred before the mainshock.
The second sentence is not correct: "The scientific community tells me there is no danger because there is an ongoing discharge of energy." Of course, the occurrence of an earthquake means that stress fault was released as energy. However, we cannot conclusively say anything about whether or not that expenditure of energy increases or decreases danger. Those minor quakes could load some section of a fault, they could indicate that a fault that was previously "stuck" is now moving, they could indicate that a dormant fault has been reactivated... they could indicate any number of things. If we are talking purely in terms of energy, though--which is what I assume that the Italian Civil Protection department was saying when he was talking about a discharge of energy--his statement is pretty silly. The moment magnitude scale is logarithmic. Every one step in magnitude is approximately 32 times the energy. Two steps is exactly 1000 times the energy. The earthquake that struck Italy was a magnitude 6.3. It would take 1000 magnitude 4.3 earthquakes to expend the energy of the magnitude 6.3. Of course, one could make the argument that the fault was right on the point of slip and just a little bit of stress release could relax it enough to not slip, but there is simply no evidence that I am aware of, anywhere, that minor earthquakes and reduce the load on a fault enough to prevent a major earthquake. In fact, Japanese scientists in the past looked into manufacturing small earthquakes by drilling holes into faults and lubricating them in the hope to release the built-up stress as many minor quakes instead of one larger one. They abandoned that idea.
Re:Misleading summary (Score:5, Informative)
You are close to what actually happened. An amateur geologist decided for reasons of his own that an earthquake was imminent and had been spreading panic for several months before the quake. These geologists tried to calm people's fears by stating (correctly) that there was no scientific evidence that an earthquake was about to strike.
I assume there have been many such predictions over the years and authorities have responded by assuring people that there was no reason to panic. As luck would have it, this time there was an earthquake that killed many people (actually not all that uncommon where it happened, so it wasn't pure luck that the guy predicted it). So now whenever anyone cries "wolf" in Italy everyone needs to take it seriously.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There was an earthquake swarm [wikipedia.org] going on for months when they said there weren't risks. In ma
Re:Misleading summary (Score:5, Insightful)
If I, as an engineer, certify that a plant is safe when it may be not, I can be jailed.
Not the same thing. This is more like having an engineer inspect an old building that has parts collapse from time to time, asking him if it's safe, and having him tell you "Well, it's no less safe than usual..."
Re:Misleading summary (Score:4, Interesting)
If I, as an engineer, certify that a plant is safe when it may be not, I can be jailed. I can't see why the same can't apply to this case.
That would be because are not among those who replaced the term "God" with "Science". It's amusing how many on Slashdot scorn the "backwards bible-thumpers" who blindly stick to their faith, yet employ that same blindness because someone happens to be a diploma-carrying scientist. In essence, they have become that which they hate.
To clarify, the problem isn't "God" or "Science", the problem is willful blindness.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If I, as an engineer, certify that a plant is safe when it may be not, I can be jailed. I can't see why the same can't apply to this case.
That would be because are not among those who replaced the term "God" with "Science". It's amusing how many on Slashdot scorn the "backwards bible-thumpers" who blindly stick to their faith, yet employ that same blindness because someone happens to be a diploma-carrying scientist. In essence, they have become that which they hate.
To clarify, the problem isn't "God" or "Science", the problem is willful blindness.
Yes, but people that believe in "God" tend to be blind on purpose. Easy to get them to believe in the unreal since they already have blind faith in something.
Re: (Score:3)
Neither there is scientific evidence that a wall will crumble or that an electric plant will cause an electric shock when engineers deny qualifications to buildings. Neither there is scientific evidence that you will be eaten by a shark if you dive into the sea of Tasmania, though there could be a "SHARKS no swimming" sign nearby. It's a matter of reasonable risks, often codified with technical rules, norms and laws.
There was an earthquake swarm [wikipedia.org] going on for months when they said there weren't risks. In many Italian towns you cannot drive trucks, and oftentimes even cars, to the center of the city because vehicles produced vibrations can damage old buildings (and that's true), yet after months of strong vibrations they just reassured the population without considering a check-up of the many old buildings of the area, nor of the important buildings (e.g. hospitals, offices) that should work 100% in case of disasters.
If I, as an engineer, certify that a plant is safe when it may be not, I can be jailed. I can't see why the same can't apply to this case.
That simply isn't true. The scientific group didn't say there was no risk, they said that the earthquake swarm did not mean a larger quake would happen. That doesn't mean a larger earthquake won't happen, just that the swarm isn't evidence that one will - there is a history in that area of minor earthquake swarms leading to nothing (with occasional exceptions). Of course, the bureaucrat mentioned did issue a statement that said there was nothing to worry about, so he at least deserves his sentence.
As for th
From now on, when asked, Geologists will say..... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
The lesson is simply to pack your family up and quietly head to safer areas whenever your research indicates that danger may be approaching. You wouldn't want to get in any trouble by trying to help other people.
Re:Misleading summary (Score:5, Insightful)
No you cannot prove a negative assertion. The burden of proof is on the original earthquake prediction. No scientific evidence came forward at the time, so the professional scientists announced their dismissal of the prediction.
The failure here is the lack of basic science education in the basic population and in the legal system's utter ignorance. Justice is not only blind, but it's spastic as well.
Re:Misleading summary (Score:5, Funny)
No you cannot prove a negative assertion.
Why should I believe that you cannot prove a negative assertion?
~Loyal
Re: (Score:3)
(sorry to ruin your joke by explaining it (I just supposed a 'woosh' wouldn't be enough for those who missed it))
Re:Misleading summary (Score:4, Funny)
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. There known knowns and there are known unknowns, but there are also unknown unknowns, things we don't know that we don't know!
Donald Rumsfeld, philosopher.
Re: (Score:3)
No you cannot prove a negative assertion.
This is just enough half-kowledge about philosophy of science
to be dangerous. That sentence is equally as non-universally true
as the infamous "correlation causation" thing.
Thing is, you often can prove a negative:
"If I let go of this stone in mid air, it will not float."
I let go of the stone.
The stone drops.
Negative assertion proven.
Re: (Score:3)
No, the people had no more reason to worry than usual, that was the message. It's not the scientists fault if they weren't worried enough already.
Read, learn, and retract. [nature.com]
Re:Misleading summary (Score:4, Insightful)
But the point is, the occurrence of an earthquake was very improbable. This fact is not changed even by the occurrence of an earthquake shortly after.
What the scientists were asked to do is effectively the same as predicting who would win the lottery. This is just not possible - even if somebody still wins it every few weeks...
The scientists were on government appointed risk assessment committee. They said there was no danger in an earthquake prone town full of ancient fragile buildings. They weren't expected to predict an earthquake, they were expected to assess and relay the risk of the area. Instead, they focused on silencing what many view as the village idiot. This article [nature.com] puts it best:
Moreover, it did not issue any specific recommendations for community preparedness, according to Picuti, thereby failing in its legal obligation "to avoid death, injury and damage, or at least to minimize them".
The only thing they minimized was public safety, and considering the gravity of their position, I can't disagree with them being held responsible.
Re: (Score:3)
Two comparisons. First, the PROBABILITY of being hit by lightening, in a thunderstorm, waving a gold-plated golfclub is still almost zero. Now will any scientist tell YOU to do that? Of course not because the lightening IS going to hit the ground somewhere, for sure.
Better example. Routine check of a bridge in daily use says its dangerous. It didn't fall down when the bridge didn't know it was dangerous. Why would it fall down tomorrow if nothing changes? Statistically, it's like asking if I can drive my t
Re:Misleading summary (Score:5, Insightful)
They have been telling stories about "the big one" for many years and it finally happened last year.
Anecdotal evidence, confirmation bias...what other problems can you find in that sentence?
Re: (Score:3)
The best analogy I can think of is medical malpractice.
If you are a professional, and lives are riding on your advice, you shouldn't expect to screw up and get away with it.
Except that I bet that when these people got into their research field, nobody told them that one day, they would be - with criminal liability - expected to predict earthquakes with the same precision that physicians diagnose diseases. Somehow I don't recall the laws regulating this.
Re:Misleading summary (Score:4, Insightful)
The best analogy I can think of is medical malpractice.
If you are a professional, and lives are riding on your advice, you shouldn't expect to screw up and get away with it.
No one "expects to screw up". Medicine and surgery, like all practical skills, are inexact. A doctor or a surgeon studies the patient, and makes his best attempt at a diagnosis. Then he makes his best attempt at treatment. If he is good, he will usually be right. Unless he is God, he will sometimes be wrong.
The attitude that I think I see in the quoted text - "you shouldn't expect to screw up and get away with it" - seems to me to combine unwarranted vengefulness with lack of foresight. Isn't it true that medical services in the USA, for instance, are made far more expensive than they have to be - partly because of the massive insurance all medical professionals need to take out in case they are sued?
Re:Misleading summary (Score:4, Insightful)
This still causes chilling effects.
Now scientists studying earthquakes will become like the various environuts who say the world is going to end at midnight, every night, because of X, Y, and Z. If they don't, they could end up in jail.
Considering how few listen to the environuts, we are in for a world of hurt if this decision permeates all science.
Re:Misleading summary (Score:5, Funny)
You mean that we cannot guarantee that the product does not contain nuts, even though the factory only makes sewing machines.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Misleading summary (Score:5, Interesting)
No, we just wont have scientists studying earthquakes anymore because they don't want the liability. This is something we call "shooting the messenger".
Re:Misleading summary (Score:4, Insightful)
You're so fucking ignorant you don't know how this is a bad thing.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I would say it like a lawyer. "Based on the information currently available to me I am reasonably certain there is no problem at this time."
Re: (Score:3)
Perhaps the best solution is for scientists to be more careful with language, as they are amongst themselves
That won't help, because if you say "on basis of facts currently available, we can't confirm that an earthquake will happen", the common folks will react with "Phew, thanks for confirming that we're safe". Which, methinks, is exactly what happened here.
Re:Misleading summary (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not a logical fallacy to state a fact. "You're so fucking ignorant you don't know how this is a bad thing" in this context is actually just a true statement ... ShanghaiBill is either trolling or he is really honestly so fucking ignorant he doesn't know how this is a bad thing. If he doesn't know, he doesn't know ... pointing out a true fact that someone lacks some knowledge is not a logical fallacy.
Re:Misleading summary (Score:5, Informative)
They should have just told the truth: That they didn't have enough data to predict anything.
That is exactly what they did say, but the politicians didn't understand them.
http://www.lagazzettadelmezzogiorno.it/GdM_english_NOTIZIA_01.php?IDNotizia=340440&IDCategoria=2694 [lagazzetta...ogiorno.it]
"There is no reason to suggest that the sequence of low-magnitude tremors are a precursor to a major event," said the committee's deputy chair Franco Barberi, according to minutes of the meeting published by prosecutors.
INGV President Enzo Boschi said "just because a small series of quakes has been observed" does not point to a large quake, which he described as "improbable, although not impossible".
It was a politician who proclaimed that there was no danger.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57537303/italian-scientists-get-6-years-for-laquila-earthquake-statements/ [cbsnews.com]
In a post-meeting press conference, however, Department of Civil Protection official Bernardo De Bernardinis, also a defendant, told citizens there was "no danger."
The failure here was one of communication and conclusions. Politicians want answers and will not tolerate "we don't know". The problem is, science is really short on answers and long on probability. That is doubly so with a science like seismology. Scientists like to be precise about all of the shades of nuance. So when the politicians ask, "will there be an earthquake" and the seismologists say "probably no", all the politicians hear is "no".
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
A misleading summary? On MY Slashdot?!
Re:Misleading summary (Score:5, Informative)
I wondered if there was more to the story than the summary indicates. I find it hard to believe a country like Italy would convict based on not having the ability to predict an earthquake.
I did some reading, and the charges have more to do with creating a perception that the earthquake risk was remote and being negligent in their duty to keep the people educated about earthquake preparation and vigilance.
Whether you agree that the scientist were negligent or not, the article title and summary are misleading and flamebait.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I did some reading, and the charges have more to do with creating a perception that the earthquake risk was remote and being negligent in their duty to keep the people educated about earthquake preparation and vigilance.
The problem is, the fact that the earthquake happened doesn't mean that their assessment of the risk was incorrect. Just because an event is unlikely doesn't mean it won't or can't happen.
--Jeremy
Re:Misleading summary (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it hard to believe a country like Italy would convict based on not having the ability to predict an earthquake.
Really? You find it hard to believe that politicians would abuse the justice system for political points in Italy? In Italy? Really? That's hard to believe?
I did some reading, and the charges have more to do with creating a perception that the earthquake risk was remote and being negligent in their duty to keep the people educated about earthquake preparation and vigilance.
If the earthquake risk was in fact remote, then how does this amount to anything other than convicting them for not predicting the quake? Just because it happened doesn't mean it was likely to happen. Long shots do occur.
Re:Misleading summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, MY GOD. That isn't even a charge, or a crime.
Here's what the folks in L'Aquila have just earned: a rapid defection of scientists on the public payroll because they are now afraid to say, or not say, anything. Because an event that can't actually be predicted under any interpretation happened when they didn't expect it.
These IDIOTS have done a serious amount of damage to people who were trying to help them. FUCK EM ALL, seriously. Fucking MORONS.
Re:Misleading summary (Score:4, Insightful)
The area resident was still a quack, The scientists still did the right thing in saying he had no scientific basis for his alarmism.
There are enough random people predicting quakes (on the basis of nothing scientific) that for any given day, if a quake happens, someone will have predicted it. Stock market crashes are the same way. Without any scientific basis for the prediction, it's noise, and it's right to say it's noise.
Re:Misleading summary (Score:4, Insightful)
Please don't elevate scientists to godlike status. All they can do is look at the evidence. Earthquakes are rare. Because of this, statistical data can be misleading. If the scientist discovers that a previous theory was flawed (and they all are, to various degrees), then they use the new data to make the theory better, or find a better theory to fit the data. The only reason we should blame the scientists is if they lied about the danger. They can't be held liable for espousing an opinion based on their best understanding of the data at the time.
they were discrediting an area resident who had been claiming that a large earthquake was going to hit soon.
Just because a broken clock is right twice a day, should we set our watches by it?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I wondered if there was more to the story than the summary indicates. I find it hard to believe a country like Italy would convict based on not having the ability to predict an earthquake.
I did some reading, and the charges have more to do with creating a perception that the earthquake risk was remote and being negligent in their duty to keep the people educated about earthquake preparation and vigilance.
Whether you agree that the scientist were negligent or not, the article title and summary are misleading and flamebait.
There is more to it, this article seems to detail it out pretty well [nature.com]. It's not "Scientists who failed to warn of Quake", it's more like "Scientists on Advisory Panel claim no danger". There was also another wrinkle in this, a resident and lab tech named "Giampaolo Giuliani" who was warning of earthquakes based on his home-made radon detectors. The article points out that the advisory panel appears to have been convened (at least partially) to silence or discredit Giuliani's predictions, and they held a pres
Re:Misleading summary (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not the whole story either. If you read your own link carefully, it points out that Giuliani predicted the quakes using a method that has never been proven scientifically and has had no peer reviewed papers published. In other words, he's a crackpot who just happened to get lucky; there was no actual reason to believe that there would be a risk of earthquakes greater than normal. The scientists who said that this guy is wrong were basically correct; they just got unlucky.
To use a car analogy, a guy is sitting at an intersection reading tea leaves. At one point his tea leaves tell him that if you go through the intersection you'll crash. The scientists say that this is nonsense and that you shouldn't worry about crashing. You go through the intersection and you crash into a car going 100 mph through a red light. that neither you, the scientists, nor the tea leaf reader could have seen or predicted. You die.
And then the scientists are put in jail for manslaughter for telling you to ignore the tea leaf reader.
At worst, the scientists didn't properly communicate "the chance of crashing/earthquakes isn't greater than normal" as opposed to "the chance is zero", and given how the media and politicians ignore such nuances, the scientists shouldn't be held responsible for that.
Re: (Score:3)
I wondered if there was more to the story than the summary indicates. I find it hard to believe a country like Italy would convict based on not having the ability to predict an earthquake.
I did some reading, and the charges have more to do with creating a perception that the earthquake risk was remote and being negligent in their duty to keep the people educated about earthquake preparation and vigilance.
Whether you agree that the scientist were negligent or not, the article title and summary are misleading and flamebait.
Ya, but earthquakes are an act of god.
Italy is the seat of the Pope.
The Pope is considered very holy, a Man of God.
Yet, this scientist is getting blamed because he didn't correctly predict an Act of God.
Seems to me, when it comes to God, it's the Pope's job to says whats up, not the scientist.
Why isn't the Pope on trial?
Re: (Score:3)
I don't know. I'm am a health care provider. In order for me to be found culpable of negligence, three things must be established:
1) That there was a duty of care (that I was required to provide).
2) That the duty of care was not met.
3) That the failure to meet the duty of care caused the harm experienced by the plaintiff victim. (That is, it can't just be some irrelevant failure on my part.)
Regarding number 1: To me, this ruling is suggesting that the scientists must predict earthquakes, something science h
Re:Misleading summary (Score:4, Funny)
You are right!
To begin with, they don't speak English! And adding to that, they do not use dollars as their currency!
Same difference (Score:5, Insightful)
The government asked for their assessment, and they gave the best prediction they could given the data they had. Nearly every other seismologist in the world would have given the same assessment. They are being sentenced to prison because they did not predict the quake, pure and simple. The lesson here is that if the Italian government ever asks your assessment on anything, the only valid response is "fuck off and die".
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The government asked for their assessment, and they gave the best prediction they could given the data they had. Nearly every other seismologist in the world would have given the same assessment. They are being sentenced to prison because they did not predict the quake, pure and simple. The lesson here is that if the Italian government ever asks your assessment on anything, the only valid response is "fuck off and die".
According to statements given to the prosecution, two members of the same committee disagreed with the assessment, albeit after the quake:
The suggestion that repeated tremors were favourable because they 'unload', or discharge, seismic stress and reduce the probability of a major quake seems to be scientifically incorrect. Two of the committee members — Selvaggi and Eva — later told prosecutors that they "strongly dissented" from such an assertion, and Jordan later characterized it as "not a correct view of things".
link TFA [nature.com]
I can see how eager you are to support scientists and hate Italy, but these were scientists masquerading as politicians. Reading through the various news reports on this paints the picture quite clearly. They let politics into their science, and people paid the price with their lives.
Re:Same difference (Score:5, Informative)
That is pretty much what they did say. Their conclusion was that the recent small earthquakes did not make it more likely that a larger earthquake was about to happen, however, this is an earthquake prone area, one could happen an any time. Furthermore, they stated that there were a lot of old unsafe buildings in the area that should be evacuated in the case of any earthquake as they do not provide any protection, and replaced as soon as practical.
Re: (Score:3)
But if all they ever answer is "I don't know", won't them put them out of a job?
Their real strength has been in predicting the effects of earthquakes. A lot of peoples' lives have been saved because seismologists and civil engineers figured out what sort of buildings and infrastructure were particularly dangerous. For example, the recent Japanese quake killed a lot less people than it would have otherwise, because of improvements in buildings and far better understanding of these sorts of disasters and their effects.
Re:Misleading summary (Score:5, Informative)
From Ars Technica: In the week before the earthquake struck, the group told the public that the high incidence of smaller earthquakes were not necessarily precursors of a larger quake. They did, however, also mention that earthquakes were unpredictable, and that building codes in the area needed to be adjusted to provide better seismic safety.
That may be what they were found guilty of, but it doesn't sound like it's what they did.
Re:Misleading summary (Score:5, Interesting)
So you're saying that there are seismologists who CAN predict a likely earthquake a week ahead of time? Interesting. Could you perhaps, provide any evidence these people exist? And tell us why they're not being used to predict earthquakes all over the world in hotspots to save lives?
Re:Misleading summary (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
I think that all those nutjobs that predict the end of the world on such-and-such a date should be thrown in prison when their predictions *don't* come true. Look at all the lives they ruined. People quitting their job, selling their house, giving away all their money. Yet they remain free to predict again and again.
Re:Misleading summary (Score:5, Funny)
We should start somewhere a little more predictable, like economists.
Re: (Score:3)
They were found guilty not primarily for failing to predict the earthquake, but for releasing a statement saying there was probably not going to be one. They are accused of giving people a false sense of security resulting in them not taking necessary precautions.
Now how about trying the survivors for being gullible and stupid.
Re: (Score:3)
They were found guilty not primarily for failing to predict the earthquake, but for releasing a statement saying there was probably not going to be one. They are accused of giving people a false sense of security resulting in them not taking necessary precautions.
If that's the case, why isn't the Pope in jail?
Re:Misleading summary (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly, this is the same country where the prosecutors in the Knox trial had her motives ranging from satanic orgy, to sex games gone wrong, to drug money homicide, to jealousy, to Knox just being a sociopath, and reefer madness. Basically, NEVER get arrested in Italy.
Moral of the Story (Score:4, Informative)
The moral is: don't work for (the Italian) Government as a scientist.
Re:Moral of the Story (Score:5, Interesting)
I work quite a lot with scientists from Italy in my area (astrophysics). They are among the most dedicated scientists I know and are doing world leading science. They are also among the least well paid - which shows their dedication to science.
The former Italian government (under Berlusconi) tried for years to marginalize science and research in Italy and this is yet another blow to the scientific system in Italy. The result will be disastrous and lead to an even larger brain drain of highly qualified people from Italy than what Italy has already experienced in the past 10-20 years. Everybody can imagine what this means for the long-term future of Italy as a place of innovation and science, which has already been damaged badly.
Re:Moral of the Story (Score:4, Informative)
Your claims about Berlusconi government are not correct. Unfortunately all the italian governments did their best to marginalize science and research, with the possible exception of those acting during the 1946-1975 interval, when there was the need to develop the italian nuclear industry. After the politicians had their nuclear toy, they threw it away a few years later [wikipedia.org], without worrying about the need of a new national research program to replace nuclear energy with something different. I got my degree in 1987, and I decided it was better to work for the industry.
Our country just celebrated the 150th anniversary, but I heard no words from a single politician recognizing the fact that one of the things that glued together the country from the very beginning was science. When our country was founded in 1961, it wasn't ever clear which official language [openlibrary.org] to use, but scientists from different parts of Italy were closely working together from the very beginning. Draw your own conclusions...
Re: (Score:3)
I am not going to name names on slashdot, but I really think that discussions should be based on facts and not on unfunded allegations as the ones you are bringing up here. It is not the people tha
Next up: Meteorologists, Astrologers, (Score:5, Insightful)
Palm readers, Farmer's Almanac, anyone who publishes a book about Nostradamus, etc ...
This is beyond ridiculous. It's just stupid.
There goes that career (Score:2)
Bad Precedent (Score:5, Informative)
On top of that, did they establish that the scientists did not believe their own statements?
Now, at least in Italy, you can expect any expert of any hard (or impossible) to predict field to start spouting worst case scenarios for every question just to avoid liability.
Real dumb move Italy. Just because you wanted a scapegoat, you've screwed yourself over for real issues.
Re:Bad Precedent (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bad Precedent (Score:4, Insightful)
Editors? (Score:5, Informative)
Quick google result here [www.cbc.ca]
See? Now you got me karmawhoring!
*ticks 'Post Anonymously'*
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Accountability (Score:5, Interesting)
Where does it start and end?
As a professional engineer, accountability starts the moment you have a license number in your state.
Any opinion you give on any project makes you liable.
The problem is that too many people are giving opinions on subjects that affect other people's lives and have zero accountability. this trial is a precursor to what may eventually become the norm.
Picture these so-called experts on TV talking about this and that and if they are found wrong and someone was affected by it, then they can be held accountable.
The same will be applied to lawyers and politicians and before you know it, people will be better off if we hold people with some sort of power (over other people) accountable.
Re:Accountability (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is that too many people are giving opinions on subjects that affect other people's lives and have zero accountability. this trial is a precursor to what may eventually become the norm.
You seem to be conflating science with engineering. Now I have news for you: there's a reason why we have two different words for these things (and no, it's not so that poets can have a richer vocabulary for writing odes).
Re: (Score:3)
As a professional engineer, accountability starts the moment you have a license number in your state.
Any opinion you give on any project makes you liable.
The difference is obvious. An engineered system is just that -- a system that is fully understood and can have predictable outcomes from known initial conditions. So...it is reasonable to expect engineers to be liable for their work. Predicting earthquakes is not anywhere near as simple. To find criminal accountability from such failures is preposterous.
A look into the future (Score:5, Funny)
"Scientists predicted that sometime this week a massive earthquake will cause all of Italy to break off and fall into the ocean, killing everyone. This marks the 27th week in a row that scientists have made that prediction. When asked about the failure of the previous 26 predictions to come true a lead scientist replied 'It's always possible we're in error and the earthquake might be a little smaller, and might not kill everyone, and possibly might not happen at all. But better safe than sorry. We're sticking with our prediction, so don't say we didn't warn you.'"
Now put the politicians on trial (Score:5, Insightful)
Congratulations, you out-stupided USA "science" (Score:4, Funny)
We in the USA feel a bit better now that there is another "developed" nation that is more fscked-up regarding science than the USA.
They need to follow the ancient Chinese and... (Score:3)
They need to follow the ancient Chinese and bring back "The Mandate of Heaven"!
Back in the 'good old days', the emperor was blamed for disasters and would be overthrown since heaven has withdrawn its support. The conviction makes about as much sense, but if you want to see this silliness stop, impose more silliness. :)
They should also blame Astronomers if there's a meteor strike and weathermen if someone gets a sunburn.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_of_Heaven [wikipedia.org]
Italians did not use current methodology (Score:5, Informative)
The only Guilty Scientist... (Score:3)
is the one that can actually predict earthquakes, because he is the one that caused them, he lives in an active volcano, and wants one million dollars! Muhahaha!
It's the Popes fault. (Score:3)
Look. Quakes are an act of God.
The Pope is the Main Man when it comes to God.
The Pope didn't warn them.
The Pope is guilty of murder.
yeah, that's real fair (Score:3)
If scientists and doctors save a person's life, people thank God for the miracle.
If an "act of God" kills people, then people blame the scientists.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Well, these are the same Italian courts who decided there's enough evidence to support the idea that cell phones cause brain tumors [slashdot.org] despite the fact there's insufficient scientific evidence that's reliable enough to say that.
Which makes one wonder how much actual hard evidence they require, and how much they think about the effects of their rulings.
Unless the ruling is getting garbled as it passes through various sources, every scientist in Italy is going to have to start couching everything in such a way a
Re: (Score:3)
Some weather services offer weather insurance. Elsewhere, they shouldn't be relied on.
Weather insurance is big in construction or weddings.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)