"An Italian court convicted six scientists and a government official of manslaughter for failing to adequately warn of the earthquake risks in the city of L'Aquila before a deadly 2009 quake..." They face 6 years in prison.
Yeah, scary stuff. If it goes through, it means that scientists aren't going to help the Italian government in fear of prosecution for errors. I see this like people needing CPR suing people that saved their lives because they had a broken rib or something. Oh society...
I've been to the affected area as I have relatives there, and it was devastating. The government has been working to rebuild, but some buildings are being just barely held together by supports. I still don't think that they should be imprisoned but not warning people about an earthquake is really terrible.
However, in today's culture of Justin Bieber, Jersey Shore, and Twilight, where every song on the radio, every program on television and every site on the internet is just another monument to the pinnacle of human stupidity, it's certainly not the worst thing that people could be watching.
Not that I agree with the ruling in any way. But, those scientists should never have commented on whether or not there would be a large earthquake. Seismologists are almost as bad as financial analysts and weathermen for predicting anything correctly. No wait weatherman and financial analysts are better than seismologists.
I see this a big, big problem of our contemporary society: it became incredibly important to have guilty people to blame. Someone to point as responsible of anything.
This is absurd it's not like the scientists' instruments detected an oncoming tsunami and they decided not to tell anyone about it, in which case they absolutely would be guilty of manslaughter, but this is completely different. There is scientific consensus that earthquakes are unpredictable, it simply can't be done with regularity.
This is a case of people being angry at the world and wanting vengeance for something that no one is responsible for.
I see this a big, big problem of our contemporary society: it became incredibly important to have guilty people to blame. Someone to point as responsible of anything.
I disagree with this statement. It isn't a contemporary problem. These days, the guys are getting the blame and ending up being jailed, but in the past there were people burned at stake for witchcraft.
In any case, this is italy shooting themselves on the foot. No one with 2 brain cells will want the position anymore, which means ZERO warning. Either that, or any tremor now gets a massive warning, then the sceitists get sued for crying wolf.
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I disagree with this statement. It isn't a contemporary problem. These days, the guys are getting the blame and ending up being jailed, but in the past there were people burned at stake for witchcraft.
Yeah, you're right. It seems like it's in human nature to look for someone to blame and unleash anger.
It doesn't seem like they did anything wrong. Measuring quakes isn't an exact science, they could have very easily just thought it was a misread. Jailing them over that? Really?
I've been to the affected area as I have relatives there, and it was devastating. The government has been working to rebuild, but some buildings are being just barely held together by supports. I still don't think that they should be imprisoned but not warning people about an earthquake is really terrible.
Earthquakes aren't storms, they don't have predictable events leading up to them that we can track. Minor tremors in the ground don't really mean anything, but can be correlated with volcanic eruptions if you're near a volcano. Earthquakes are not similarly broadcast.
While there are issues to discuss and I appreciate them, I agree with gaoling these scientists for what they have done or, rather, what the haven't done but should have. I'm not an Italian lawyer and I'm making the presumption that Italian law is somewhat similar to English law, but this seems open-and-shut criminal negligence (and more but do you want the book?).
Yeah, scary stuff. If it goes through, it means that scientists aren't going to help the Italian government in fear of prosecution for errors. I see this like people needing CPR suing people that saved their lives because they had a broken rib or something. Oh society...
I don't envision that happening any time soon. Good Samaritans seldom incur civil liability due to laws that protect them and all.
They're not the same or similar and are markedly different in character, context, and severity.
It's not about criminal negligence, it's about large earthquakes being impossible to predict under current technology. Literally, it *can't* be done. Seismically active areas can have hundreds of minor earthquakes daily, they aren't indicative of large earthquakes occurring. Similarly, non seismically active areas have earthquakes too. There were a couple big-ish (~4.0 Richter) ones just this year in the eastern USA.
Nobody is going to want a job where they can be randomly arrested and jailed. Nobody saw the big quakes in Indonesia, China, or Japan coming, the Italians just suffered a lot of damage because it was a very big quake on buildings not constructed to be quake proof. It happened to Atlanta about a hundred years ago, caused about as much damage to the city as Sherman.
While certainly considerations, if scientists do a decent job, they're substantially less likely to do what these six have done.
I think that both the prosecution and defence have fair points and, while the defence may be right in fact and law, the scientists, while doing their duty as scientists, failed to do their duty as consultants for their government and their memorandum was peppered all throughout with what is scientifically acceptable and conventional language (not simply diction) but was of very limited utility and understated potential danger to the government.
There is clearly an issue of communication and, as the scientists did what they did in good faith and with no intent to screw anyone over, I'd like to see them vindicated; but, I'd also like there to be some redress for the victims and/or their family as well as the manner in which advisory bodies dispense their advice to governments and so on.
While there are issues to discuss and I appreciate them, I agree with gaoling these scientists for what they have done or, rather, what the haven't done but should have.
I'm not an Italian lawyer and I'm making the presumption that Italian law is somewhat similar to English law, but this seems open-and-shut criminal negligence (and more but do you want the book?).
So what should they have done? Sound an alarm when they thought there was no clear immediate danger?
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Earthquakes aren't storms, they don't have predictable events leading up to them that we can track. Minor tremors in the ground don't really mean anything, but can be correlated with volcanic eruptions if you're near a volcano. Earthquakes are not similarly broadcast.
Not that I am heavily knowledgeable in the field but I do watch a ton of science channel and such and I recently watched and then read some papers which are alluding to the possibility that small tremors are in fact precursors to large quakes. There is just still no way to determine where the large quake will be. Now that we have seismic readers covering almost the entire planet and have several decades of that kind of data to look at, they have been able to after the fact determine that certain small tremors were in fact warning signs leading up to a large quake. The problem is some of them are on opposite sides of the world depending on the severity of the impending shake-up. They have also been making some really good headway on predicting aftershocks, except that again they are finding links between large tremors that cause aftershocks on the other side of the world.
There are still massive quakes that have no build-up to them of course. So the consensus is still we can't predict earthquakes, but from what I understood the common consensus was to no longer take a series of small quakes lightly. Thus why I think leading scientists in the field should not have given the impression in any way to not expect a large quake.
Not that I am heavily knowledgeable in the field but I do watch a ton of science channel and such and I recently watched and then read some papers which are alluding to the possibility that small tremors are in fact precursors to large quakes. There is just still no way to determine where the large quake will be. Now that we have seismic readers covering almost the entire planet and have several decades of that kind of data to look at, they have been able to after the fact determine that certain small tremors were in fact warning signs leading up to a large quake. The problem is some of them are on opposite sides of the world depending on the severity of the impending shake-up. They have also been making some really good headway on predicting aftershocks, except that again they are finding links between large tremors that cause aftershocks on the other side of the world.
There are still massive quakes that have no build-up to them of course. So the consensus is still we can't predict earthquakes, but from what I understood the common consensus was to no longer take a series of small quakes lightly. Thus why I think leading scientists in the field should not have given the impression in any way to not expect a large quake.
It's true that small shakes can prelude large ones, but there's also tons of times that small shakes are just that: small shakes. Most quakes come and go exactly like that. Aftershocks are predictable after large quakes, but most earthquakes are small to the point of being undetectable.
Ultimately, the trial said that seismologists need to be prognosticators, and their guys did so to the best of their ability, saying the odds of a big quake occurring are 1 in 50. The earth rolls the die, and it's a crit. 300 people die and an area is devastated. A tragedy: foreseen, but not expected based on their best information and understanding. The Italian government wants their seismologists to be something they're not. The trial lawyers say it's not about prognostication, but whether they properly evaluated risk and stressed dangers. They said there was a very low risk, they were correct: these things DON'T happen all the time, and now they're on trial for that highly unlikely situation occurring.
The worst part of all this is that it's the presiding governor of the region who should be prosecuted, because it was ultimately his decision on what to do based on the evidence as his seismologists presented it. Surely he's the one who calls the shots around there. Revise your building codes and try again. The Italians might try prosecuting the Church for not warning them of God's plan to cause the quake, God in absentia for the quake, or Berlusconi for real crimes.
I don't know the exact numbers, but I do know that often when calculating the probability of something happening, you use statistics and it is common to reject anything below 5% probability is going to happen, on more important cases it can be lowered (which is probably the case here, but as I said, I don't know the exact numbers used), but it is impossible to say anything with 100% certainty. If each time there was maybe a 2% probability of an earthquake happening and people got evacuated, people would simply tire of the warnings and not take them seriously anymore, which would be worse when there is an actual earthquake warning with a very high probability of occurring, since they would probably ignore it. Also the amount of resources used to evacuate for example 49 times would be large and it would have been wasted money. If an actual earthquake is happening it would be wiser to save the resources to help rebuilding the destroyed areas and helping the people who got into trouble. It is understandable not liking to evaluate human lives, but as a government does not have unlimited resources, it should prioritize to use them where there is the highest probability of the resources will be used efficiently, especially with such a debt as Italy got.
I believe it was scandalous to convict people for this if the probability of it occurring was small, since any competent person would have done the same as the seismologists in that case.
It's true that small shakes can prelude large ones, but there's also tons of times that small shakes are just that: small shakes. Most quakes come and go exactly like that. Aftershocks are predictable after large quakes, but most earthquakes are small to the point of being undetectable.
Ultimately, the trial said that seismologists need to be prognosticators, and their guys did so to the best of their ability, saying the odds of a big quake occurring are 1 in 50. The earth rolls the die, and it's a crit. 300 people die and an area is devastated. A tragedy: foreseen, but not expected based on their best information and understanding. The Italian government wants their seismologists to be something they're not. The trial lawyers say it's not about prognostication, but whether they properly evaluated risk and stressed dangers. They said there was a very low risk, they were correct: these things DON'T happen all the time, and now they're on trial for that highly unlikely situation occurring.
The worst part of all this is that it's the presiding governor of the region who should be prosecuted, because it was ultimately his decision on what to do based on the evidence as his seismologists presented it. Surely he's the one who calls the shots around there. Revise your building codes and try again. The Italians might try prosecuting the Church for not warning them of God's plan to cause the quake, God in absentia for the quake, or Berlusconi for real crimes.
I'm not sure you read my post or understood what I was saying, so not really sure why you quoted me, asserted a stance disagreeing with me then posted content that agrees with what I'm saying?
In any case the scientists should not be held responsible for suggesting the risk was low. The risk WAS low but not no risk. Therefore it would have been better for them to issue no statements saying that people would be safe. They failed to cover their asses properly, but that is no reason to jail them, or put them at fault in any way.
Then be ashamed, since it's exactly the same thing that happened to the FEMA commitee after katrina. And yes, while quakes aren't predictable, in italy there is the widespread habit of buildings things not with security (against quakes) in mind but money-saving.
Zero members of FEMA were convicted of manslaughter, despite the fact that FEMA failed to respond properly even after the extent of the damage was already evident (rather than failing to predict an event that we don't know how to predict).
How is that the same thing?
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"An Italian court convicted six scientists and a government official of manslaughter for failing to adequately warn of the earthquake risks in the city of L'Aquila before a deadly 2009 quake..." They face 6 years in prison.
Sources:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203630604578072781357127300.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20025626
Can't believe that they would jail them. Thankfully, this is not a final sentencing because they have an appeals process.
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This is a case of people being angry at the world and wanting vengeance for something that no one is responsible for.
In any case, this is italy shooting themselves on the foot. No one with 2 brain cells will want the position anymore, which means ZERO warning. Either that, or any tremor now gets a massive warning, then the sceitists get sued for crying wolf.
"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
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Because we care about facts.
Earthquakes aren't storms, they don't have predictable events leading up to them that we can track. Minor tremors in the ground don't really mean anything, but can be correlated with volcanic eruptions if you're near a volcano. Earthquakes are not similarly broadcast.
I don't envision that happening any time soon. Good Samaritans seldom incur civil liability due to laws that protect them and all.
They're not the same or similar and are markedly different in character, context, and severity.
Nobody is going to want a job where they can be randomly arrested and jailed. Nobody saw the big quakes in Indonesia, China, or Japan coming, the Italians just suffered a lot of damage because it was a very big quake on buildings not constructed to be quake proof. It happened to Atlanta about a hundred years ago, caused about as much damage to the city as Sherman.
I think that both the prosecution and defence have fair points and, while the defence may be right in fact and law, the scientists, while doing their duty as scientists, failed to do their duty as consultants for their government and their memorandum was peppered all throughout with what is scientifically acceptable and conventional language (not simply diction) but was of very limited utility and understated potential danger to the government.
There is clearly an issue of communication and, as the scientists did what they did in good faith and with no intent to screw anyone over, I'd like to see them vindicated; but, I'd also like there to be some redress for the victims and/or their family as well as the manner in which advisory bodies dispense their advice to governments and so on.
they happen when they happen. from what i have seen though in italy there isn't a conviction until there is an appeal so they could win the appeal.
i see it as a waste of time.
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So what should they have done? Sound an alarm when they thought there was no clear immediate danger?
Not that I am heavily knowledgeable in the field but I do watch a ton of science channel and such and I recently watched and then read some papers which are alluding to the possibility that small tremors are in fact precursors to large quakes. There is just still no way to determine where the large quake will be. Now that we have seismic readers covering almost the entire planet and have several decades of that kind of data to look at, they have been able to after the fact determine that certain small tremors were in fact warning signs leading up to a large quake. The problem is some of them are on opposite sides of the world depending on the severity of the impending shake-up. They have also been making some really good headway on predicting aftershocks, except that again they are finding links between large tremors that cause aftershocks on the other side of the world.
There are still massive quakes that have no build-up to them of course. So the consensus is still we can't predict earthquakes, but from what I understood the common consensus was to no longer take a series of small quakes lightly. Thus why I think leading scientists in the field should not have given the impression in any way to not expect a large quake.
It's true that small shakes can prelude large ones, but there's also tons of times that small shakes are just that: small shakes. Most quakes come and go exactly like that. Aftershocks are predictable after large quakes, but most earthquakes are small to the point of being undetectable.
Ultimately, the trial said that seismologists need to be prognosticators, and their guys did so to the best of their ability, saying the odds of a big quake occurring are 1 in 50. The earth rolls the die, and it's a crit. 300 people die and an area is devastated. A tragedy: foreseen, but not expected based on their best information and understanding. The Italian government wants their seismologists to be something they're not. The trial lawyers say it's not about prognostication, but whether they properly evaluated risk and stressed dangers. They said there was a very low risk, they were correct: these things DON'T happen all the time, and now they're on trial for that highly unlikely situation occurring.
The worst part of all this is that it's the presiding governor of the region who should be prosecuted, because it was ultimately his decision on what to do based on the evidence as his seismologists presented it. Surely he's the one who calls the shots around there. Revise your building codes and try again. The Italians might try prosecuting the Church for not warning them of God's plan to cause the quake, God in absentia for the quake, or Berlusconi for real crimes.
I'd be ashamed if it were my gov't.
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I believe it was scandalous to convict people for this if the probability of it occurring was small, since any competent person would have done the same as the seismologists in that case.
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I'm not sure you read my post or understood what I was saying, so not really sure why you quoted me, asserted a stance disagreeing with me then posted content that agrees with what I'm saying?
In any case the scientists should not be held responsible for suggesting the risk was low. The risk WAS low but not no risk. Therefore it would have been better for them to issue no statements saying that people would be safe. They failed to cover their asses properly, but that is no reason to jail them, or put them at fault in any way.
How is that the same thing?