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.
Moral of the Story (Score:4, Informative)
The moral is: don't work for (the Italian) Government as a scientist.
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.
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.
Editors? (Score:5, Informative)
Quick google result here [www.cbc.ca]
See? Now you got me karmawhoring!
*ticks 'Post Anonymously'*
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:Editors? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Misleading summary (Score:5, Informative)
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: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:Misleading summary (Score:2, Informative)
Wrong. The "big one" they've been warning about was in a completely different region of Japan.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/03/110315-japan-earthquake-tsunami-big-one-science/ [nationalgeographic.com]
From now on, when asked, Geologists will say..... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Misleading summary (Score:5, Informative)
that radio dude
Paul Harvey
Re:Misleading summary (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 press conference afterwards where they effectively said there was "no danger" and to go drink some wine.
This is about public officials in a position of trust trying to calm or silence the worry of the public. With the seismic history of the region, what sane scientist would claim that there was no danger? They're not in trouble because of their science, they're in trouble because they let their politics take precedence over public safety. There are other tidbits in the article that lead to this conclusion, showing that the meeting held that day was unusual in many regards, including the lack of routine earthquake preparedness warnings. It looks like the panel "shot from the hip" that day, and missed the mark so horribly that lives were lost as a result of the direction given. When you accept the responsibility of serving on a panel like that, negligence should be a punishable offense.
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.
Italians did not use current methodology (Score:5, Informative)
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:Same difference (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: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:Misleading summary (Score:2, Informative)
"With the seismic history of the region, what sane scientist would claim that there was no danger?"
If the region has such a history of significant seismic activity, then surely the people who live there would be aware of this, and would already be doing regular earthquake preparedness, as is done in seismically active parts of the US?
A more relevant question is, can they prove that the specific individuals who died, would have survived if they had been warned by these scientists in the way that you describe. That seems flimsy and unlikely to me. At best, if these guys are 'shooting from the hip', you can maybe accuse them of doing a poor job and firing them. But culpability for deaths, that is stupid.
Read the article. Here's another link [nature.com]. The residents had a regular routine of leaving their houses and going to safer ground and sleeping in their cars when small earthquakes had hit. Based on the statements from that meeting, the residents stayed in their homes that night, the Italian equivalent of "no danger" fresh in their minds. Had that meeting never happened, they would have left their homes, and many would have been alive today.
Thing is, in a seismically active region, danger exists "all the time" ... 24/7. And the people who live in these regions know this. Should people avoid, say, going to work permanently then, if some level of danger is always there? Only idiots believe that "scientists" are magically able to predict earthquakes.
Only idiot scientists would allow a statement of "no danger" to come forth from their meeting. They took that responsibility on themselves (when they accepted their appointment to the "Great Risks" committee, and when that statement was made), and now that it's come back to bite them, they don't want it anymore. Perhaps they should have taken their position more seriously.
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: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".
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]