Italian scientists get earthquake blamed on them (I wish I was making this up)

Foxhound38

Even when it was the earthquake, I KNEW it was the scientists!

Seriously though, while we're very good in this country at pointing the finger at people who aren't ourselves for anything and everything, we haven't quite blamed a person for a natural disaster yet!

Jimoslimos

Crazy! Who next, meterologists? Michael Fish must be sh1tting himself.

Celly Smunt

i hear there's a volcano blowing it's way into rome as we speak.

Ciaran_B

"Let's go burn down the observatory so this will never happen again"

Paully D

I bet they were really shaken with the verdict.

flutterflye

Oh god - what earth shattering news.

Seriously though - that's the most ridiculous thing I have ever read.

Pottler

So it WAS those damn scientists! I knew it..

GLaDOS

I wonder was it a case of there being a set protocol in place, which they ignored or deviated from, resulting in the incorrect warning?


Only reason I can really think they can be blamed.

My name is URL

Their supreme court has also ruled that mobile phones contribute to brain tumors.. despite mountains of evidence that show that's not true. Cue thousands of people mounting similar claims.

http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/378027/mobile-phone-use-linked-to-tumor#.UIW9XoamVL5

castletownman

Well it was hardly an act of God now was it?

Benny_Cake

One of the dumbest things I've ever read. Way to encourage the study of science, Italy.

Lapin

Big difference between being blamed for causing an earthquake and being blamed for not acting on the information available to them prior to the quake.

But hey, why let the truth get in the way of a new thread on boards ?

BrokenArrows

madness. I cant imagine being put in prison for that.

I can image the conversation in prision with fellow inmates.

"What are you in here for?"
"Killed 309 people!"
"No seriously, what are you in for?"
"I was being serious"
lol

Dempsey

Crazy verdict!

My name is URL

Lapin wrote: »

Big difference between being blamed for causing an earthquake and being blamed for not acting on the information available to them prior to the quake.

But hey, why let the truth get in the way of a new thread on boards ?

They were charged with manslaughter ffs. Whichever way you look at it, that's a bit extreme.

BrokenArrows

My name is URL wrote: »

They were charged with manslaughter ffs. Whichever way you look at it, that's a bit extreme.

Ive seen your username around boards forever but it only just clicked with me that your username is a joke of My name is Earl

:pac::pac:

flutterflye

BrokenArrows wrote: »

Ive seen your username around boards forever but it only just clicked with me that your username is a joke of My name is Earl

:pac::pac:

I only got that the other day too!
I didn't figure it out myself though - Someone else called him "Earl", and I was here thinking, "wtf? his name is not Earl, it's..... ahhhh"
Felt like a big thick!

GLaDOS

My name is URL wrote: »

They were charged with manslaughter ffs. Whichever way you look at it, that's a bit extreme.

Hypothetically, if they were told that they had to give an evacuation order after tremors of a certain strength were detected and they chose to ignore this, do you not think they are partly responsible for the death toll?

Not saying this is necessarily what happened, but it's plausible.

Lapin

My name is URL wrote: »

They were charged with manslaughter ffs.

Exactly.

They weren't charged for causing the quake.

Richard Hillman

Genius move. Now watch all of Italy's best geologists emigrate.

My name is URL

Lapin wrote: »

Exactly.

They weren't charged for causing the quake.

They may as well have been

The last paragraph of the article sums it up

If the scientific community is to be penalised for making predictions that turn out to be incorrect, or for not accurately predicting an event that subsequently occurs, then scientific endeavour will be restricted to certainties only, and the benefits that are associated with findings from medicine to physics will be stalled.

keith16

Richard Hillman wrote: »

Genius move. Now watch all of Italy's best geologists emigrate.

Pfft. We don't want them, we've enough to worry about without "earthquakes".

ninebeanrows

Unreal.

Will surely be quashed on appeal.

Was it a public jury or what? Might explain it.....

squod

I don't see a problem with the trial or it's outcome.

the National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks

Prosecutors said the defendants gave a falsely reassuring statement before the quake.

Their job seemed fairly straightforward. No-one dies if the warnings are mistaken. People die if no warning is given. It's kinda like air traffic control with fault lines. These dudes fuhked up.

Sunday's SF Emergency Siren "A Mistake"

cherryghost

The is the most stupid thing I've ever seen. Completely ridiculous and the jury and other attendees in that court have been misinformed to an extreme.

Meteorologists all over the world cannot predict the nature of earthquakes, even if there may be warning signs before a major quake. The fact is, if every meteorologist gave out a state of emergency because of tremors that may have occured proir to the event, the world would be in a neverending state of emergency.

Let's take Japan for example. Japan can experience up to 400 earthquakes a day. Was there a warning put out prior to the devastating quake of March 2011? No. Were they convicted of manslaughter? No. Because people still do not fully understand earthquake patterns and pointing the finger at meteorologists is a complete and utter stupid thing to do.

What should have Italy done? They should have taken their fingers out of their arses and concentrated on making structures more quakeproof. Take Greece and Turkey for example. All modern buildings since the early 70's have been built with a specific frame in mind that takes stress off the structures and offloads it elsewhere. In Italy this is non existant. This is not the first quake that caused a large amount of damage in terms of human lives and financial costs.

I really can't stress how worrying this case is. I really hope it's not the start of it.

squod

Nudder article which gives both sides of the argument.


http://www.earthmagazine.org/article/hazardous-living-italian-seismologists-tragically-convicted-manslaughter

one vocal person — not a seismologist, but a technician at a physics institute — claimed that increased radon gas levels in the area suggested a major earthquake would strike before the end of March. Because the public was growing concerned and asking for answers about this so-called prediction, the seismologists and officials of the Civil Protection Department issued a statement suggesting that ongoing tremors didn’t indicate that a larger quake was imminent. The problem, according to the prosecution, was that this statement (falsely) reassured people and thus they didn’t evacuate and 309 people lost their lives.

ScumLord

ScienceNerd wrote: »

Hypothetically, if they were told that they had to give an evacuation order after tremors of a certain strength were detected and they chose to ignore this, do you not think they are partly responsible for the death toll?

If they did issue evacuation orders every time there was a tremor they'd be fired long ago because what I gather from that article is that tremors are regular and common events.

cherryghost wrote: »

Meteorologists all over the world cannot predict the nature of earthquakes,

Well obviously, as they study the weather I'm not at all surprised.

I think the scientists could have lost their jobs over this if it's shown to be negligence on their part but manslaughter is way over the top.

Italys a crazy country though, they even make us look good by comparison. By Italian standards we're practically German.

Mal-Adjusted

Foxhound38 wrote: »

Seriously though, while we're very good in this country at pointing the finger at people who aren't ourselves for anything and everything, we haven't quite blamed a person for a natural disaster yet!

i don't know about that. Miriam O callaghan went to town on the Icelandic president over the ash cloud a few years back!

MagicSean

Lapin wrote: »

Big difference between being blamed for causing an earthquake and being blamed for not acting on the information available to them prior to the quake.

But hey, why let the truth get in the way of a new thread on boards ?

In this case the truth is just as ridiculous. Not really surprising when you think of it. How often are dictors sued for missing a diagnosis. These days there always had to be someone to blame for everything.

King Of Wishful Thinking

cherryghost wrote: »

Meteorologists all over the world cannot predict the nature of earthquakes

Precisely and so they should make that abundantly clear when giving life or death advice to those in immediate danger.

MagicSean

Mal-Adjusted wrote: »

i don't know about that. Miriam O callaghan went to town on the Icelandic president over the ash cloud a few years back!

And let's not forget the trouble raised when we ran out of salt for the roads

starbelgrade

Jailed on very shaky grounds in my opinion.

namloc1980

This is madness. Earthquake prediction, by its very nature, is NOT an exact science.

Well we all know what'll happen now:

1. Italian seismologists will be issuing evacuation notices now at the slightest hint of a tremor,
2. Evacuations will be happening at a regular occurrence for no reason,
3. People will eventually give up evacuating because of their frequency,
4. Earthquake hits killing many people who ignored warnings,
5. Seismologists put in jail for crying wolf.

Turtwig

squod wrote: »

Nudder article which gives both sides of the argument.


http://www.earthmagazine.org/article/hazardous-living-italian-seismologists-tragically-convicted-manslaughter

It's not really reliably proven that you can predict an earthquake from radon gas emissions. Maybe you can, but it's not exactly an accepted science yet. He could just have easily have just fluked his correlations.
Interestingly, if people had heeded his warning they'd have been evacuated into the area where the quake did the most damage. He got his location and safety zones completely wrong.

delw

You really got to lava this decision

asherbassad

Not only is it preposterous but it sets a dangerous precedent.

My cynical mind tells me that it's a ploy to silence the IPCC. A climatologist now comes out and says that sea levels will rise or bush fires will become more prolific. Some fcukstick moves house, the dire predictions don't initially turn out to be so harrowing and so fcukstick sues the climatologist and demands his incarceration for .....I don't know what.....something retarded like breach of the peace or willful misrepresentation or some crap.

On the upside maybe we can get Dominionists and End Timers banged up for scaremongering.

Jimoslimos

Lapin wrote: »

Big difference between being blamed for causing an earthquake and being blamed for not acting on the information available to them prior to the quake.

But hey, why let the truth get in the way of a new thread on boards ?

The "information" available was by no means indicative of future quakes. Problem is people want simple yes/no answers instead of fairly dry risk figures.

JustAThought

delw wrote: »

You really got to lava this decision

Don't get too shaken up about it

Does this mean I can sue Met Eireann?

daigo75

cherryghost wrote: »

The is the most stupid thing I've ever seen. Completely ridiculous and the jury and other attendees in that court have been misinformed to an extreme.

There's no jury in Italian courts (nor in most of Europe). The people who gave the verdict were entirely "wise men of law".

Ash.J.Williams

this harks back to ancient tribal ritual where they burn the prophets for getting **** wrong...mental

ArtSmart

Deleted User wrote: »

Does this mean I can sue Met Eireann?

Get in line.

Italy. Until I talked to an Italian in detail about the country, I always assumed it was a normal European state.

It aint. For all its madness the Banana Republic of Ireland is streets ahead.

The sense of shame sane Italians must feel when the see Berlusconi elected not once, ot twice, but trice. and the actions of the Mafia, especially the killing of that school girl in the south recently.

I tells ye, we bad, but we aint mad.

daigo75

ArtSmart wrote: »

Italy. Until I talked to an Italian in detail about the country, I always assumed it was a normal European state.

I know how you feel, it's like waking up in Matrix. One of my neighbours was asking me what I didn't like about "such beautiful Country". I simply mimicked 15 seconds (counted) of a work meeting in Italy, and he stared at me as if I escaped from a mental hospital. Still, what I showed him was absolutely true.

ArtSmart wrote: »

It aint. For all its madness the Banana Republic of Ireland is streets ahead.

True. Ireland, with all its issues, is on another level altogether.

ArtSmart wrote: »

The sense of shame sane Italians must feel when the see Berlusconi elected not once, ot twice, but trice. and the actions of the Mafia, especially the killing of that school girl in the south recently.

I feel more anger than shame, but for the hypocrisy of the people who went to the government "in the name of freedom" in 1946, and they are still sitting there, overpaid and corrupt.

By the way, the killing of the school girl was not done by the mafia, but by (apparently) a single individual who had a penchant for explosives (he placed a bomb in one of his customers' bike some time ago, because he didn't pay some goods he delivered).

wonderfullife

Outrageous. So they are convicted for giving "reassurances" which proved to be misguided. Well there goes every politician in this country to Mountjoy.

Kudos to the man who left this GEM of a comment on the BBC site on the article:

"I think they should prosecute the Pope, after all he has a direct line to God and neither of them gave any warning whatsoever."

Capt'n Midnight

Lots of people get off murder charges and such over there on appeal.

I'd be shocked if they didn't get off on appeal.

But there may be a little more to it

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20025626

Lawyers have said that they will appeal against the sentence. As convictions are not definitive until after at least one level of appeal in Italy, it is unlikely any of the defendants will immediately face prison.

BBC comments page

So the people who predict earthquakes are liable yet the people who build buildings that collapse and kill people are not?????
...
BBC is doing disinformation with this article: there's no mention of what happened behind the scene, context and wire tapped phone calls of Bertolaso who decided what the scientists where supposed to say because as he literally said they were just a media event, this and more can be found in Italian on La Repubblica homepage.

http://www.geologyinmotion.com/2012/02/update-on-trial-of-italian.html

http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/01/wiretap-revelation-could-aid-italian-seismologists-defence.html

All those indicted took part in a meeting held in L’Aquila on 30 March, 2009, during which they were asked to assess the risk of a major earthquake in view of many shocks that had hit the city in the previous months. Most of the trial revolves around a statement made to the press by the deputy head of the Italian Civil Protection Bernardo De Bernardinis, who is among the indicted: “The scientific community tells me there is no danger because there is an ongoing discharge of energy.”

According to the Public Prosecutor of L’Aquila, that statement made some citizens who were about to flee their homes decide to stay instead, and thus indirectly caused their death. But those words have been judged scientifically incorrect by most seismology experts, including some of the accused scientists, who deny having said anything like that at the meeting. So a key question in the investigation was where those words came from.

On 20 January the Italian newspaper La Repubblica revealed a taped telephone conversation between Guido Bertolaso, then head of the Civil Protection, and Daniela Stati, an officer of the L’Aquila Provincial Administration, recorded the day before the meeting. Bertolaso can be heard saying, of the seismologists now on trial: “I will send them there mostly as a media move. They are the best experts in Italy, and they will say that it is better to have a hundred shocks at 4 Richter than silence, because a hundred shocks release energy, so that there will never be the big one.”

The wiretap was part of a separate investigation (on the organization of the G8 meeting in L’Aquila in 2009, also coordinated by Bertolaso) and had hitherto gone unnoticed because it was not relevant to that case. As a result, the Public Prosecutor of L’Aquila announced on 24 January that Bertolaso is now also under investigation for manslaughter. According to media reports, the prosecutors are considering asking for a parallel trial for him.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1285754/Italys-corruption-police-tape-Popes-phone-calls.html

The Pontiff made four telephone calls to Italy's civil protection chief Guido Bertolaso following last year's devastating earthquake in the centre of the country which left 300 people dead.

Bertolaso is at the centre of a corruption probe involving sexual favours and back handers for reconstruction projects in the L'Aquila region which was hit by the earthquake 14 months ago.

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=it&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lastampa.it%2F2012%2F10%2F22%2Fitalia%2Fcronache%2Fcommissione-grandi-rischi-sei-anni-a-tutti-gli-imputati-fk9eFTJmzpST4peiPWYZhP%2Fpagina.html

Scientists have been found guilty of the death of 29 people and the wounding of four, whose behavior had been placed directly related to the underestimation of the danger by the Major Risks Committee. For the other victims of the earthquake was not picked up a causal link with the assessments of major risks.

Logical Fallacy

flutterflye wrote: »

Oh god - what earth shattering news.

Seriously though - that's the most ridiculous thing I have ever read.

Then you clearly didn't read the article, the OP is way off in his summary.

They are not being blamed for the Earthquake, they are being blamed for their handling of the disaster and the failure to issue the correct warnings beforehand.

finbarrk

Hopefully they get off on the appeal.

flutterflye

Logical Fallacy wrote: »

Then you clearly didn't read the article, the OP is way off in his summary.

They are not being blamed for the Earthquake, they are being blamed for their handling of the disaster and the failure to issue the correct warnings beforehand.

Eh, yeah, I did!
It's ridiculous.

VinLieger

Logical Fallacy wrote: »

Then you clearly didn't read the article, the OP is way off in his summary.

They are not being blamed for the Earthquake, they are being blamed for their handling of the disaster and the failure to issue the correct warnings beforehand.

Of course they arent being blamed for the earthquake, they arent some supervillian with an earthquake machine.

This is ridiculous, they made an educated scientific guess based on the facts available to them and they were wrong, nobody sued the japanese seismologists who missed the earthquake that triggered the fukushima incident and ALOT more people died during that.
Despite what some people would like to believe there is NO accurate way to predict earthquakes.
Also these people live in a area plagued by earthquakes why havent they paid to reinforce their houses? Or why hasnt the local government instituted laws to force people and builders to do this?
Scientists cant be held responsible for this, in future all thats gonna happen is at the slightest tremor evacuation sirens will be set off since no seismologist is ever gonna risk being in this situation and the regions economy is gonna go down the tubes since nobody will be able to get any work done since they will always be evacuating.
The statement in question was made 6 days before the earthquake what if they had called an evacuation then? How long would it take to evacuate 73,000 people? And then how long do they wait for the earthquake to hit? A week? 2 weeks? What if after 5 days and no earthquake people were yelling about going back to their homes and work and they had to let them?
Hindsight is a wonderful thing

squod

Mualchin said that seismic hazards were not properly assessed in L’Aquila. “Italy is one of the countries with the best seismic knowledge in the world. And yet look at what a 6.3 earthquake has done to this city. That knowledge was not used, and scientists are responsible for that. They were conscious of the high risk in the area, and yet did not advise the people to take any precaution whatsoever,” he said.

The problem is in part a scientific one, Mualchin said. The Italian scientists based their analysis on the frequency of earthquakes in the area. This is known as the probabilistic seismic-hazard analysis (PSHA), a method that is state of the art in many countries, but that, in Mualchin’s view, systematically underestimates seismic hazard because it does not consider extreme and rare events.

“Frequency is not important, what really matters is the largest earthquake we can expect, the strongest one that has happened in the past. Risk prevention should be based on that,” he said. This is the philosophy behind deterministic seismic-hazard analysis, a method that Mualchin says has been mostly abandoned by the scientific community, to the point that younger seismologists do not even learn about it.

http://www.nature.com/news/new-twists-in-italian-seismology-trial-1.10049

Just to update my earlier posts. Some copypasta from February news this year. It seems that rather than earthquake proof a load of buildings set on a hill (very costly or near impossible). They took on a team of scientists to warn people.

Look. Seems to me that this is going to court and sentences will be shortened or quashed altogether. But the fact of the matter is that these dudes had a job to do and they couldn't do it. So, why were they there?

squod

http://www.bayarearetrofit.com/hillside_homes.html

Homes in hilly areas.