Geologists Might Be Charged For Not Predicting Quake 375
mmmscience writes "In 2009, a series of small earthquakes shook the region of L'Aquila, Italy. Seismologists investigated the tremors, but concluded that there was no direct indication of a big quake on the horizon. Less than a month later, a magnitude 6.3 earthquake killed more than 300 people. Now, the chief prosecutor of L'Aquila is
looking to charge the scientists with gross negligent manslaughter for not predicting the quake."
way to drive (Score:5, Insightful)
science out of your country.
No indications means they didn't detect any indication. That could be due to poor technology, or perhaps because there were no indications.
Re:way to drive (Score:5, Funny)
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I see... Another humorless /.er.
His sarcasm was very appropriate given what's going on in our country today, and what the mayor of the town in Italy is doing. It was both relevant and timely as this entire story is political in nature. The mayor is playing politics by suing the geologist to cover up his own ineptitude and corruption in not making sure his town actually was earthquake-proofed as had been alleged.
This is exactly what has been done by US government inspectors falsifying records relating to
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Or that there are indications all the time, but 99.99% of them are false alarms.
Re:way to drive (Score:4, Interesting)
If an event is present "all the time", and "99.99%" of the time it is a "false alarm", then it isn't an indicator at all.
Re:way to drive (Score:5, Interesting)
Winston P. Graves liked consistency in his life. He sat down at the table in his breakfast nook and carefully opened the paper with one hand while pouring cereal into a bowl with the other. He scanned the headlines and noted the "9.0 Earthquake Predicted Today: Mass Devastation!" and calmly looked toward his bowl while he poured the milk. He took comfort in the headline knowing there was no cause for concern. It was the same headline that had been there yesterday. And the day before. And every day before that since the big quake 18 years ago that actually did devastate the city and had killed more than 20,000 people. Following the quake, the attorney general, known for his flair in front of juries, won convictions, and death penalties, for the government geologists who had failed to predict the quake, and for the newspaper editors who had failed to act on the finally accurate prediction of the quake by a local astrologer. Since then, the new government geologists and newspaper editors following the example of that astrologer and published formal predictions of deadly earthquakes every day. Of course there had not been any notable earthquakes since then, but neither had there been executions.
Like medical malpractice (Score:5, Insightful)
That's exactly what happened to healthcare in the USA in the last 30 years.
When any doctor can be sued for not detecting a disease you can bet there will be plenty of unneeded medical tests prescribed for everyone and costs will skyrocket.
Re:Like medical malpractice (Score:5, Informative)
Corollary 1:
When any doctor can pad his wallet by ordering tests, you can bet there will be plenty of unneeded medical tests prescribed for everyone and costs will skyrocket.
Corollary 2:
When any patient can request test at no cost to them, you can bet there will be plenty of unneeded medical tests prescribed for everyone and costs will skyrocket.
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I don't think that's how malpractice works, perhaps a lawyer here can chime in? The way I (a layman) understand it, you can sue for anything but that doesn't mean you'll win. To win you need to prove that the doctor didn't follow accepted practices.
If you go to the doctor with chest pains and the doc gives you an EKG, the EKG says no heart disease, so he says "you're ok, it's just heartburn" and a year later you discover you have breast cancer that could have been cured had it been detected, don't you think
Re:Like medical malpractice (Score:5, Insightful)
Many doctors will tell you that many tests are either unnecessary, or even harmful. There was a story just yesterday on /. about the radiation exposure from medical imaging. Other tests are invasive, some have false positives and cause treatments, even surgery, for non-existent conditions, and they all cost a lot.
There was a This American Life program last year (listen to it here: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/391/More-Is-Less [thisamericanlife.org]) about health care costs and they quoted a doctor who tried to convince an attorney/father of an injured girl not to give her an CAT scan when a simple test based on a rule of thumb would suffice and avoid radiation exposure. He had to weigh the cost of the time it would take to convince the dad/att'y. He admitted, he could just give the CAT scan to save himself the time and avoid a complaint. No one would ever blame a cancer she got twenty years later on the CAT scan, he'd get paid more, etc. Many reasons to give the CAT scan. But, in this case, he decided to push the issue saying it was not in the patients interest to do the CAT scan. The dad relented.
Another example given: PSA test for prostate cancer.
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Re:way to drive (Score:5, Insightful)
Way to drive FALSE PREDICTIONS INTO your country.
"Uh... to avoid being charged with manslaughter... er... i mean... the data shows that.... there will be an earthquake today... and every other day this year too. Be ready for an earthquake at any moment, because our uhm... data... shows that it could happen!"
Re:way to drive (Score:4, Informative)
Fuck 'em. I wouldn't "predict" a damn thing, but would seek ways to enrich myself from predicted outcomes.
If people will fuck you for trying to do good, abandon that and fuck THEM instead.
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Re:way to drive (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:way to drive (Score:5, Insightful)
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Last I heard, prosecutors don't get paid based on the number of people they go around charging. Convicting, probably, but there's probably easier cases to make.
I don't know about Italy, but here in America, prosecutors (DAs) are publicly-elected officials. This means that aside from being attorneys, they're also politicians. So to get re-elected, it's in their interest to generate as much publicity for themselves as possible which their constituents like (but not publicity that brands them negatively).
Pro
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What if it was due to incompetence? What if it was their job to save lives and instead they were slacking off? From a linked article:
"L'Aquila Mayor Massimo Cialente recalled his frustration at receiving no clear reply to his repeated questions and the apparent lack of concern on the part of some present."
As a person of science I think it's great you are giving benefit of the doubt to the scientists, but maybe the prosecutors deserve some too. My intuition is to believe the committee when they say they coul
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What does he have to say about earthquake prediction? "Everyone knows that you can't predict earthquakes." [time.com]
Case closed?
Re:way to drive (Score:5, Insightful)
And as TFA points out, this is after the government shut up a scientist saying there WAS going to be a quake.
Predict a quake before one happens and you're in trouble. Don't predict one before it happens and you're in trouble.
One of these days, we scientists need to drive politicians out of our country. And off the planet entirely.
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science out of your country.
No indications means they didn't detect any indication. That could be due to poor technology, or perhaps because there were no indications.
You know what is funny?
I recall a couple articles on slashdot around the time it all happened... You know what happened? Look up the links on slashdot if you like.
An italian seismologist/geologist actually *DID* predict the earthquakes and told everyone to grab their socks and look out. He warned about a week early and was reemed for it and was actually being tried by an italian court for something akin to yelling fire in a theater, etc. Then after the quake happened a little later, I think he got the ch
Re:way to drive (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing in the article really suggests that they were wrong given the evidence they had at the time. They're Geologists, not soothsayers.
Re:way to drive (Score:5, Interesting)
Nothing in the article really suggests that they were wrong given the evidence they had at the time. They're Geologists, not soothsayers.
Predictability is a continuum, not a binary scale. Earthquakes fall much further on the "hard to predict" side of things, but there is no arbitrary point at which you can draw a line. If a home inspector incorrectly claims a house has no sign of termites, a forester claims that a fire poses no danger to settled areas, or BP engineer claims that the methods used at Deepwater posed no danger to the environment, you aren't always going to be comfortable saying "oops, shit happens"
Were these geologists negligent? Given our current understanding of earthquakes, we can off-handedly state, "probably not", but we aren't sure. Is it unreasonable for somebody to want a court to investigate further, given the scale and scope of the damage? Not really.
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I agree, but I was responding to the AC, who was essentially putting forth that it was be a binary ("if they aren't sure about what they say then they shouldn't say it"), and then being a random flamebaiting asshole ("calling it science is questionable...").
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Never the less, this is a perfect way to kill a science in its infancy. Had they released probability figures someone would find fault with that as well.
They did not HIDE their findings, they simply did not make predictions.
You have to call witnesses in most countries. (Itally, not so much). Where will they find Geologists willing to set the science back 500 years for failing to make a prediction?
Damned if they do, and Damned if they don't, I would choose a different career path.
Re:way to drive (Score:5, Insightful)
It's all about what's reasonable and normal in the profession.
If other seismologists look at the circumstances and data and say, "we would have made the same predictions, based on the evidence", then you can't fault these seismologists/geologists, because they're not grossly incompetent compared to their peers in the field.
However, the Deepwater thing was different. From what I've read, petroleum engineers did not agree with what was going on there, Halliburton engineers thought it was unsafe, but BP managers decided to push ahead anyway.
These types of things should be judged by juries composed of actual peers. Our Constitution actually uses that word ("a jury of one's peers"), but juries aren't made up of peers, they're made up of morons who are easily swayed by emotional arguments (anyone not fitting this description is thrown out by the attorneys). Cases involving science should be decided by juries of scientists. Any trials about BP should have juries composed of petroleum and other engineers. They're the ones best able to determine who's really right and wrong, not some moron who has no job and no excuse to duck out of jury duty, and certainly not some stupid judge who only knows how to administer law, but nothing about technical matters that these cases hinge upon.
How about "innocent until proved guilty"? (Score:3, Insightful)
You know that this would get you acquitted in any reasonably democratic country in the world, right?
The civilized norm is that you must be sure in order to convict anyone of a crime.
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I'm writing this sitting in an area that's been predicted to have a massive 8.0+ earthquake for at least the last 30 years. It has yet
Re:way to drive (Score:5, Informative)
Were these geologists negligent? Given our current understanding of earthquakes, we can off-handedly state, "probably not", but we aren't sure. Is it unreasonable for somebody to want a court to investigate further, given the scale and scope of the damage? Not really.
Not only that. People should understand some basics of the Italian law system before jumping to conclusions, making comparisons and pretending everyone is an idiot (I'm not referring to you).
When authorities are notified or simply become aware of crimes, they are obliged to investigate. In this case there were several accusations made by people and prosecutors were obliged to investigate. Just to give some more perspective, charges are for homicide and other related crimes. The researcher that was investigated in the past for saying there would have been an earthquake, was charged (if I remember correctly) for procured alarm to authorities (still a crime).
Beside the obligation to investigate, I also agree with you that is not necessarily unreasonable to investigate further. I'm pretty sure these guys will be discharged and the outcome of the trial may be helpful in future to prevent similar things to happen (both geologist trying to be less conservative and people being discouraged to make criminal accusations for nothing).
This helps to understand the technical part of it, but of course there's more: the political part.
Lately the civil protection department has gone through several scandals related to rebuilding activities of the area and it's close to the current government. Part of the population is pissed off because: they lost relatives, rebuilding is happening slowly and lot of promises remained just promises. The judiciary bench is often accused by the right wing (current government) to have the majority of judges being close to the left wing and to try to overcome the government.
So, depending on the political orientation, people think either that prosecutors are just doing their jobs, or that they are trying to put pressure on the government accusing the civil protection. You may feel a bit puzzled at this point asking yourself what's the problem if, after all, they are simply following the law that obliges them to investigate. A common argument by right wing people is that there are simply too many notifications of crimes and accusations to investigate on all of them and the judiciary bench selects them (or better give priorities) based on a political agenda.
So, don't think this is only a matter that has to do with science. It has more to do with the judiciary system and politics.
Now people can feel free to think everyone here is an idiot :)
Re:way to drive (Score:4, Informative)
It's a difference in language (and/or translation) between civil and common law countries. To be 'indicted' in most civil law countries means that you are being formally investigated. Charges are provided at a later stage (traditionally called assizes). In common law countries on the other hand, it is not necessary to declare that an investigation is being undertaken. But any formal charges require an indictment, which means a grand jury has to find there is probable cause, reasonable suspicion or prima facie evidence to indict.
(Not a lawyer, but did major in world history)
Re:way to drive (Score:4, Insightful)
Because hard data (if well demonstrated) actually stands up pretty well in court. The burden of proof is on the accusor to show that the data and method actually showed a possibility of a major earthquake and were negligent in missing it.
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A geologist is not like a BP engineer. Engineers are responsible for their engineering methods. If an engineer uses poorly understood methods, then they are responsible for the results if they let their project proceed. Geologists do not in general do things that might cause earthquakes.
A geologist is not like a building inspector that you can hire to tell you that your house is safe and has no termites.
Geologists study their earth. Their job is not to do impossible things like make short term pre
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Lawsuits vs. god [wikipedia.org]
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"They're Geologists, not soothsayers."
Funny you should say that. They are not one in the same, but it seems the Italians have replaced one with the other and expect the same results. Maybe they should go back to the previous technology.
From the Wikipedia disambiguation page for "Soothsayer":
"In Roman and Etruscan religious practice, a haruspex (plural haruspices; Latin auspex, plural auspices) was a man trained to practice a form of divination called haruspicy, hepatoscopy or hepatomancy. Haruspicy is the
Re:way to drive (Score:5, Informative)
This is science, you never know for sure. In science you never have a complete answer, just a series of partial, half wrong answers. Hopefully you get better answers over time, but you never know the exact, complete answer. In this case we have a complicated system, one we have very little success in predicting its behavior. And they didn't say there will be no earthquake, just that the minor ones don't imply an imminent major one. I see no problem with this claim (as long as it is reasonable by modern seismology).
"It's hard to make predictions - especially about the future." --Robert Storm Petersen
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The science of predicing earthquakes has so far bordered on Phernology. I don't mind a learning curve, even a 100 year one. But if they led people to believe that something was going to happen, and there were negative consequences because of it, they should be hung out to dry like the rest of us. Not for being wrong, but for basing a strong conclusion on incredibly flimsy ground.
Re:way to drive (Score:4, Funny)
The science of predicing earthquakes has so far bordered on Phernology. I don't mind a learning curve, even a 100 year one. But if they led people to believe that something was going to happen, and there were negative consequences because of it, they should be hung out to dry like the rest of us. Not for being wrong, but for basing a strong conclusion on incredibly flimsy ground.
/. - spreading natural disasters puns since 1997.
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They didn't lead anyone to believe something was going to happen. They said there was no evidence that something would happen. Big difference. Instead of calling for an evacuation, and then nothing happening, and all that effort going to waste, they didn't call for an evacuation, and people died.
The problem is, earthquakes can happen anywhere, any time. Which way do you want your seismologists to err? Do you want them to call evacuations any time they think something could happen? Or do you want them
Vice Versa (Score:5, Insightful)
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Quite, they never seem to be able to make their minds up. The slightest bit of evidence and it's all change. One moment it's Newtonian mechanics, and then Einstein comes along and it's all wrong.
P.S. 6,000 years.
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I'm not sure what to search for to find it, but that actually already happened. Fairly certain it was in Italy, too. Dude predicts a quake on a certain day, it doesn't come to pass, the city sued him or some shit? Then the quake hit a few days later? I think this happened last year. Sketchy details, yes, but it's out there waiting for someone to dig up who recalls a few more details than I do.
Long story short: Italian bureaucracy is on par with French hygiene and English cuisine.. these are stereotyp
Re:Vice Versa (Score:5, Informative)
Best snippet from the Time article [time.com] linked to in the first of your WSJ articles:
The researcher had said that a "disastrous" earthquake would strike on March 29, but when it didn't, Guido Bertolaso, head of Italy's Civil Protection Agency, officially denounced Giuliani in court last week for "false alarm." "These imbeciles enjoy spreading false news," Bertolaso was quoted as saying. "Everyone knows that you can't predict earthquakes."
Priceless.
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Pizza Hut? Domino's?
Dude, seriously. You're in New Zealand. You owe it to yourself and your stomach to go to Hell's Pizza. Yes it's called Hell's. It's also some of the best damn pizza in the world.
Pizza Hut and Domino's are like... they're the Hershey's Chocolate of pizza. Filling, tastes sort of like it should, but totally slumming it compared to Ghirardelli's or Godiva.
Note: I am not recommending putting Godiva chocolate on your Hell's pizza. Or Hershey's on your Domino's. Unless you really want
Fine... as long as... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll go along with that argument, as long as we can throw politicians in jail any time there is some economic disturbance that impacts the population. After all, they should be able to accurately predict and prevent such things.
Re:Fine... as long as... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fine... as long as... (Score:5, Insightful)
Prosecutors will sure as hell take the credit when they win because it was obviously their hard work that secured the conviction.
And, not all things are tried in front of a jury, some are purely in front of a judge.
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In the federal courts, if both the prosecution and defense agree, any trial, even a felony trial, can be a bench trial. It is apparently a fairly controversial defense tactic, but I was reading an article [abajournal.com] the other day that contended that the conviction rates in bench trials had gone down during the period with federal mandatory minimum sentencing drug laws.
But barely a year after the introduction of federal sentencing guidelines, judges and juries began heading in different directions. In the 14 years from 1989 through 2002, the conviction rate of federal juries increased to 84 percent, while that of federal judges decreased to 55 percent. In 2006, jury conviction rates exceeded bench rates by 25 percentage points (89 percent to 64 percent, respectively).
The hypothesis is that while the jury is not allowed to know the weight of the sentence before convicting (and will thus convict fairly easily), the ju
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You weren't expecting anyone to argue with you here where you???
This reminds me of one of the best lines in all of movie making.... "They killed Congress" followed by a menacing laugh ;-) Gotta Love Mars Attacks!
Re:Fine... as long as... (Score:4, Funny)
I'd rather use the scientists to come up with a better/easier/faster/more amusing way of getting rid of the politicians.
How much energy is stored in a politician anyways?
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On the other hand if you're thinking of releasing all of the kinetic energy stored in said politician's molecules.... Woah.
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For purposes of this exercise, assume a perfectly spherical politician.
Italy? (Score:5, Funny)
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"ue-happy country"
A myth spread by insurance companies.
While there are issues, and always will be, it's a reasonable system overall.
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Dude, Rome had the entire lawyer thing down well before the Republic fell. IIRC, there is writing of Caesar discussing the sue happy nature of Rome much like it is discussed in the USA today and for a time he even was a lawyer.
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It just so happens that I have an infinity billion yen creating machine and I will give one infinity billion yen to you... but it is only licensed to you and there is no guarantee it will work after you log in for an update.
conclusion: always say there will be a quake (Score:2)
That way you can never be charged for failing to predict it. Of course everyone will start ignoring your predictions, even if you really do have evidence a big quake is about to hit, and lots of people may die, but your ass will be covered.
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In any case, I predict there won't be any geologist in Italy in the near future.
Sounds about right (Score:2)
Given their stellar investigation and handling of the Knox trial- I'd expect a conviction with a 20-30 year sentence.
Oh wouldn't *that* be nice! (Score:2)
I worked this one job where the boss would routinely ignore my planning advice, get some outside incompetent guy to do things, get me to clean it up when things went horribly wrong, and then complain to me that I wasn't getting enough progress on my own initiatives. What I'm getting at here is that I would *love* to be able to hold people accountable for ignoring good, substantiated advice and planning.
It was predicted! (Score:5, Interesting)
I forget the specifics, but a local technically minded person had predicted this earthquake, largely based on gas venting. He gave a date and it didn't happen, so the local politicians went about prosecuting him for the equivalent of yelling "fire!". But then the earthquake hit the next day. I assume this is a continuing effort on the part of the local politicians and prosecutor to lay the blame anywhere but on themselves.
Re:It was predicted! (Score:5, Interesting)
Article on slashdot about this is found here:
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/06/1935246 [slashdot.org]
Italian scientist Giampaolo Giuliani, a researcher at the National Physical Laboratory of Gran Sasso, recently gave warning about an earthquake that was to happen on March 29th of this year near L'Aquilla. Based on radon gas emissions and a series of observed tremors he tried to convince residents to evacuate, drawing much criticism from the city's mayor and others. Giuliani was forced to take down warnings he had posted on the internet. The researcher had said that a 'disastrous' earthquake would strike on March 29, but when it didn't, Guido Bertolaso, head of Italy's Civil Protection Agency, last week officially denounced Giuliani in court for false alarm. 'These imbeciles enjoy spreading false news,' Bertalaso was quoted as saying. 'Everyone knows that you can't predict earthquakes.' Giuliani, it turns out, was partially right. A much smaller seismic shift struck on the day he said it would, with the truly disastrous one arriving just one week later. 'Someone owes me an apology,' said Giuliani, who is also a resident of L'Aquila. 'The situation here is dramatic. I am devastated, but also angry.'"
Oh, Italy, please don't ever change.
High-Impact Hypothesis Testing (Score:2)
So basically anyone on the losing side of a hypothesis test now gets prosecuted.
If P > 0.10, go directly to jail. Awesome!
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Hard to believe.. but true!
http://politifi.com/news/Can-radon-gas-leaks-predict-earthquakes--416169.html [politifi.com]
Giampaolo Giuliani, a researcher at Italy's Gran Sasso laboratory, alerted authorities in the region of Abruzzo that a quake was imminent " and was condemned for raising a false...
Science to English (Score:5, Insightful)
It appears the statement that the precursor data did not indicate a following quake was taken to mean that there would be no following quake.
This appears to be a science to english translation problem on the nature of causality and dependency.
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Well, probably Italian, but good point.
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oh, no wonder then - should have translated to Italian!
Yes.... (Score:2)
Send the weatherman to where the sun don't shine (Score:3, Interesting)
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Maybe this will be a good thing? (Score:2, Interesting)
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Human intelligence is generally in a much more nascent stage than most people are willing to admit.
FTFY
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Science is generally in a much more nascent stage than most scientists are willing to admit
If you actually bother to talk to any scientists, they will freely and enthusiastically discuss the limits of their field of study. Knowing what you don't know is the most important part of being a scientist.
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WTF does that even mean? Science is moving along quite nicely. Of course it's just a method for determining events in nature. A pretty good one at that.
IS there a lot of stuff we don't know? sure. Every scientist know that and doesn't say otherwise. There are also specific fields that we know a lot about because of the use of science.
Your post is gibbering nonsense that can only lead me to assume you have no idea what science actually is.
There is more to know, and the unknown isn't unknowable.
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You know, most scientists will actually give you a pretty clear idea of where their knowledge ends and where guesswork begins. The good ones will refuse to give solid predictions based on the fact that they can't, and they'll tell you as muc
I hear they're DOOMed (Score:2)
^_^
What were they planning on doing? (Score:2)
Even if the scientists correctly predicted a quake, what were they planning on doing about it?
Old kind of strategy (Score:3, Informative)
The Chinese did this thousands of years ago with their astronomers. If they failed to predict a solar or lunar eclipse, they'd be executed.
Citation [cwru.edu]
In Italy... (Score:2)
Do they sue the weatherman?
Lawyers always know best! (Score:2)
Good to see the chief prosecuter's extensive geological research has established earthquake prediction to such a finely tuned science that not acting on it is tantamount to murder.
Next up, doctors will be arrested for not predicting your cancer.
It's a matter of extreme negligence. (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok, maybe you need to know something about the Italian judiciary system. In Italy there is something called "obligatory penal action", which means that if there is even the simple suspect of a crime being committed, then an investigation must be started.
In the quake case, the investigation started because the people responsible for monitoring the situation explicitly reassured the population by telling them that there would be no big quake. Any responsible scientist, given the continuous small shakes that were ongoing, would have at least said something on the line "We believe there will be no major quake, but please do not lower your guard".
And that is why there was an investigation that ended with them being charged for negligence.
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"We believe there will be no major quake, but please do not lower your guard".
Do you know how the people would interpret the second part of the sentence?
something along "ZOMG we're all gonna dieee!@#"
When people are afraid and worried you just talk to them like you talk to a child, as "don't worry nothing bad is going to happen"
Re:It's a matter of extreme negligence. (Score:5, Interesting)
In the quake case, the investigation started because the people responsible for monitoring the situation explicitly reassured the population by telling them that there would be no big quake. Any responsible scientist, given the continuous small shakes that were ongoing, would have at least said something on the line "We believe there will be no major quake, but please do not lower your guard".
Except for the guy who warned them about it, of course.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L6566682.htm [alertnet.org]
He was muzzled for attempting to incite a panic after predicting the very same quake these other seismologists said there was no evidence for. In other words, damned if you do, damned if you don't. There was no evidence, really, not anything definitive. It was just an educated guess that happened to be correct.
What's really disgusting is the only reason the scientists said anything at all was because the government set up a panel specifically to reassure the population that there would not be an earthquake. So the scientists told the truth: there was nothing abnormal about the tremors, and there was no evidence for an impending quake. They also said that did not mean there would not be a quake, just that there was nothing to suggest there would be one. Italians obviously missed that part.
The people who should be on trial are the politicians/bureaucrats who set up the panel to begin with, not the scientists who told them exactly what they asked for (and truthfully).
At this point, if you're an Italian seismologist and the government asks you if there is going to be an earthquake, my advice is to respond with "Fuck if I know."
Ha (Score:2)
Must be Italy. Sounds like something Caligula would have done.
Counter argument (Score:2)
Act of God (Score:4, Insightful)
When dealing with insurance companies or other situations where the environment is taken into account where damage and loss of life are concerned, the words "act of God" are used to describe that which is outside of human control and predictability. An earthquake falls neatly within that scope of definition. And with this happening in Italy of all places, I find it shocking that they do not appreciate the notion of such events being an act of God.
This is not simply shocking, I see it as a government assault on scientists, scientific research and science in general. They are essentially charging scientists for not knowing everything about everything.
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Well, they correctly predicted that someone would rob a bank. Excelsior!
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Sure, under some circumstances, if the disaster was predictable (flood, earthquake, landslide, hurricane) and someone didn't take normal or minimum non-neglegent steps to avoid putting others in danger, or lied about being ready.
Lying about your building being seismically upgraded, for example, and then having it fall down.
The scientists' correct response is "There's a 100% chance of multiple
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No, it's not. It's actually an indication that a big earthquake is less likely. Consider this grossly oversimplified model: earthquakes happen because there's potential energy between two chunks of rock; one chunk of rock wants to move North, the other chunk wants to move South, but they're stuck on each other. The pressure between the two keeps on growing and growing until something breaks, and you get an earthquake. If you have lots of small earthquakes, that means that the potential energy between the tw
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1632 called and wants their anti-science stance back.
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the fact thery we are on top proves you otherwise.
Humans are awesome. except you, you can go fuck yourself.
Re:hope they get a good defense team.... (Score:4, Insightful)
This is not suing someone, this is criminal prosecution. They're very different things.
Basically, they're saying that, due to incompetence, the scientists caused the deaths of those people by not giving sufficient warning -- which, as you point out, so far can't be accurately predicted with any reliability.
Criminal charges for this demonstrates that the prosecutor doesn't understand science, and is looking for a scapegoat.
Although, from the linked article on The Independent [independent.co.uk], this seem to be coming from pressure from citizens. I'm sure if the warning had been raised, and it didn't happen, they'd be looking to sue for that too.
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