Earthquake Predictions and the Triumph of Scientific Illiteracy in an Italian Court
Unbelievable—scientists convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to six years in prison for failing to predict an earthquake. Looks like we’re not the only ones headed for scientific illiteracy. Knowing we have company is little consolation. *sigh*
Rarely since a Catholic inquisition in Rome condemned Galileo Galilei to spend the remainder of his days under house arrest for the heresy of teaching that the Earth revolves around the sun, has an Italian court been so wrong about science.
Today, a court in the central Italian city of L’Aquila, 380 years after that miscarriage of justice, sentenced six scientists and a government bureaucrat to six years in jail on manslaughter charges for their failure to predict a 2009 earthquake that left more than 300 people dead. […]
The seven, all members of the “National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks,” were convicted after an apparently emotional trial in which the testimony of people who had lost loved ones were allowed, as if it was relevant to the question of whether current science can predict earthquakes. No grief, no matter how great, can answer that question (which is a resounding “no,” by the way). […]
Alan Leshner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science put it this way in an open letter to Italian President Giorgio Napolitano in June 2010, urging the trial be headed off:
Years of research, much of it conducted by distinguished seismologists in your own country, have demonstrated that there is no accepted scientific method for earthquake protection that can be reliably used to warn citizens of an impending disaster. To expect more of science at this time is unreasonable. It is manifestly unfair for scientists to be criminally charged for failing to act on information that the international scientific community would consider inadequate as a basis for issuing a warning.
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BTW, the journalist who wrote this, Dan Murphy, has written other excellent articles on a wide range of subjects. He’s @bungdan on Twitter if you want to follow him.
UPDATE: Please also see this other LGF Page about the same story. It has more and better commentary by the poster.