Italian scientists guilty of manslaughter

[cronus]

Authority figures should be held accountable for their words because ordinary folk have to make decisions based on them. Giving a false sense of security with no reasons is as bad as spreading panic with no reasons. Regards earthquakes there is no predictive mechanism and hence they should have said nothing concerning the future. If technology or the science improves then they can say. The fact animals appear to have some biological mechanism, perhaps radon gas or electrostatic detection or something else, should mean these experts should have taken notice of peoples concerns rather than dismissed them?

[Cormac]

Authority figures should be held accountable for their words because ordinary folk have to make decisions based on them. Giving a false sense of security with no reasons is as bad as spreading panic with no reasons. Regards earthquakes there is no predictive mechanism and hence they should have said nothing concerning the future. If technology or the science improves then they can say. The fact animals appear to have some biological mechanism, perhaps radon gas or electrostatic detection or something else, should mean these experts should have taken notice of peoples concerns rather than dismissed them?

Nope.

[odysseus]

Say goodbye to weather forecasting if this judgement sticks - which is highly unlikely.

It's Italy. Their justice already is infamous for unreliability and individual judges coming up with patently absurd decisions. The scientists are only going to relocate and spread the horror story abroad... I bet even fellow EU countries will give them political asylum in such a case.

^^^ what he said

[Pappa]

IIRC they said nothing culpable at all. Just that a large earthquake was not highly probable, which by the data available was true.

And still is true even after the event.

If there was a 5% chance of a quake in any given year.... that's still a 5% chance. I have no idea of the probabilities they claimed, as the news reports seem devoid of them, but whatever they were the existence of the quake doesn't invalidate them at all.

[cronus]

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/ar ... e206e9.5e1

Top Italy scientists resign in protest at quake ruling

ROME — The head of Italy's top disaster body quit in protest Tuesday after seven of its members were sentenced to jail over a deadly earthquake in a shock ruling that the global science community warned dealt a dangerous blow to scientific freedom.
Luciano Maiami, the head of the Major Risks Committee, and several top scientists resigned after seven of the body's members were found guilty on Monday of manslaughter for underestimating the devastating L'Aquila quake which killed 309 people in 2009.
Maiami, one of Italy's top physicists and a former head of top particle physics laboratory Cern in Geneva, described the verdict as "a big mistake" and said he had resigned because "there aren't the conditions to work serenely".
The verdict has provoked deep anger and concern in the global science community, with top experts warning of the repercussions and saying their colleagues had been used as scapegoats.
The seven defendants are appealing the ruling by the court in the medieval town of L'Aquila in central Italy. Under the Italian justice system, they remain free until they have exhausted two avenues of appeal.
"These are professionals who spoke in good faith and were by no means motivated by personal interests, they had always said that it is not possible to predict an earthquake," Maiami told the Corriere della Sera newspaper.
"It is impossible to produce serious, professional and disinterested advice under this mad judicial and media pressure. This sort of thing doesn't happen anywhere else in the world," he said.
"This is the end of scientists giving consultations to the state."

(continued, risk averse lads?)

[mistermack]

Italy's top seismologists were called in to evaluate and the-then deputy director of the Civil Protection agency Bernardo De Bernardinis gave press interviews saying the seismic activity in L'Aquila posed "no danger".

He advised local residents to relax with a glass of wine.

Sounds like there's been a bit of buck-passing going on.
The politicians want to quell the panic after a few minor quakes, so they lean on a few scientists for a quote which takes the pressure off them.
The scientists might not have known how what they said was going to be used.