A bizarre trial and verdict for Italy’s earthquake scientists
Santa Maria Church in Paganica, damaged by the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake | pablo72 | Wikimedia Commons
Six Italian scientists were found guilty of manslaughter by an Italian court for failing to predict the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake.
They were each sentenced to six years in prison, plus damages. They were also ordered to pay the massive court costs, including that of the prosecution, as well as damages. Finally, the guilty scientists were barred from ever holding public office again.
Among those convicted was Enzo Boschi, one of the world’s most respected seismologists, and former head of the Italian National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology.
The Oct. 22 guilty verdict is the culmination of a trial that began in September 2011. The judge deliberated for only four hours before issuing his verdict. Consistent with Napoleonic law used throughout most of continental Europe, a jury was not involved.
More than 300 people perished in the central Italy 6.9 magnitude earthquake. The region resides on an active volcano and earthquake zone.
The 6 convicted scientists were members of the Great Risks Commission, an Italian committee of scientists which evaluates potential for natural disasters. The week before the earthquake, they met to discuss the small earth tremors that had rattled the area for several months.
After the meeting, they issued a statement concluding that a major quake in the near future was improbable, although one could not be excluded. The meeting and statement led to manslaughter charges on grounds that the scientists failed to alert the Aquila population of “an impending major earthquake.”
During the trial, the judge and Italian government were deluged with expert opinions from around the world in support of the scientists. This included an open letter (pdf) to Italy’s President from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), signed by 5,000 scientists from around the world.
“To predict a large quake on the basis of a relatively commonplace sequence of small earthquakes and to advise the local population to flee” would constitute “both bad science and bad public policy,” noted David Oglesby, an associate professor of Earth Sciences at University of California.
This ruling may well change the way experts disclose their opinions, noted David Spiegelhalter, a professor specializing in public understanding of risk at Cambridge University in Britain.
“If the scientific community is to be penalized for making predictions that turn out to be incorrect, or for not accurately predicting an event that subsequently occurs, then scientific endeavor will be restricted to certainties only and the benefits that are associated with findings from medicine to physics will be stalled,” noted Malcolm Sperrin, director of medical physics at the UK’s Royal Berkshire Hospital.
On the flip side, maybe this creates a precedent to convict and jail Al Gore and the Penn State and East Anglia scientists who famously manipulated global warming research a few years ago and then started blaming every bad storm, cold wave, and heat wave on global warming. I wrote about that here and here.
Certainly, it will finally give Americans traveling in Europe a clever comeback when they are forced to listen yet again about various absurd American lawsuits such as the one against McDonalds for damages caused by spilled hot coffee.
This ignorant attack by government on science may be the worst since the 1615 Inquisition found Galileo guilty of heresy for suggesting that Earth revolved around the sun. That Italian court commuted Galileo’s death sentence to house arrest for life after he recanted his scientific findings.
Let’s hope sanity prevails in the current Italian legal system and the L’Aquila earthquake seismologists will be found innocent in their inevitable appeals.
October 29, 2012 - 6:00 AM
I can’t wait to read what the ridiculous anti-science crowd here has to say about this.
Truly fascinating and educational…..Opens a Pandora’s box on wild and crazy law suits we might consider in Roanoke. Given your “dream” about Taubman and Fralin, If I were a wealthy man, I’d file suit to make the two of them to tear the thing down and put the Art Museum where it should have gone in the first place, the building Grand Home Furnishing donated for that purpose, I believe. But, then again that’s now apartments…..I’d sue the Rescue Mission for them to stop expanding in S.E., bringing in a never ending flow of people looking for free food and housing. The idea for law suits would be endless, LOL.
Hey Mark J,
I think this is fantastic. Maybe some accountability is beginning to creep into the world of academicians(sp?) and “scientists”. While I think jail time is too extreme, I’m glad that the entire topic is being broached.
Hmmm, wonder where it’ll lead?
A modern day witch hunt.
Re: Comment by scott — October 29, 2012 @ 7:14 am
Well done!
Frank is right on cue.
This has disturbed me ever since the story broke. The possibilities are a little scary. Six years for not predicting… an earthquake? Where does it stop? Hurricanes? Tornadoes? Heat waves? Lightning?
The group of people who will cheer most for this judgement are the very same people trying to say we don’t cause natural disasters and we don’t affect our environment. We can’t cause or prevent natural disasters (hence the adjective “natural”), but we can be held responsible for them.
Even worse, when it comes to earthquake forecasting, they are by definition improbable events. A swarm of minor quakes can signal either a large quake building or a fault zine settling. I wouldn’t neither be lying or inaccurate to tell someone that a moderate quake in Virginia is improbable. Yet, one happened anyway. Does that make me responsible for the damage or injuries that occurred as a result?
Next up: local weather forecasters burned at the stake for failing to predict the drought. Film at 11.
should read: “I would neither be lying nor”
Perhaps I should put the coffee down.
J.M. White,
I have to confess that when Mark sent me the essay, and I began reading it, my first inclination was that it was satire. He can be very sly when he wants to be. And I was a little concerned that he was heading for an ethnic joke at the expense of Italians.
And then I got through the whole thing, and did a little extra reading, and realized it was for real. Simply unbelievable.
Yea. Galileo thought they were joking also. After all, he was a freind of the Pope’s and a lot of his science was funded by the Vatican. To his surprise, in return for their funding, the Vatican expected science consistent with their story.
Man made global warming science and research follows this pattern to a T. However, unlike Galileo, the global warmer scientists, led by the Penn State & East Anglia crew are not dissapointing their governmental pay masters. There are links in the above column to my essays on that subject, for those interested.
Dan, I had to source it out myself when it popped up on the BBC website. I though they had started running articles from The Onion. If this judgement stands, there could be dark days ahead for scientific advancement.
Science and the yearning to understand our universe shouldn’t be a punitive field. Scientists are some of the few people in this world who are just as excited when their theories are wrong as they are when they’re are right. By it’s very nature, there are few certainties in science.
Presently, that uncertain nature and its now-possible criminal implications could be the very thing that keeps people from entering/studying the field in the future. Like always, I’ll wait to see how things ultimately unfold before getting truly upset about it.
A bad precedent for weather people.
Re: Comment by Kristen — October 29, 2012 @ 2:44 pm
Will the economist be next?
DaveH, LOL.
We can hope.
Serious question here.
Were these private sector employees not employes of Italy’s Civil Protection Department, would criminal charges have been brought?
@11: this is the reason why most TV weather-people don’t actually prepare a forecast, but rather report on what someone or something else has forecast what the weather will be. It eliminates, or at least minimizes, potential liability.
Bringing these individuals up on charges, let alone convicting them is so backward thinking that it is frightening.
hey J.M., and even you, dano,
just goes to say it’s not so good to hype so much. as the pendulum swings….one way….then the other. that’s all it is, don’t try to read so much into it…..
That comment makes no sense whatsoever.
This would be like suing a 4 year old child’s pediatrician for not figuring out at they will possibly have cancer when they are 50.
STUPID.
Were these private sector employees not employes of Italy’s Civil Protection Department, would criminal charges have been brought?
I couldn’t say for sure, but I’d have to guess no.