Medieval Laws at Work - Italian scientists sentenced to jail in quake trial

[bennycog]

this is a massive debate.. imagine the scientists that will not even bother to predict any damagable outcome of an earthquake at all. giving people no security of how stable their homes and surrounding land are..
i feel for the scientists and i wonder just, if that earthquake had to happen at all.
" pointing to my nose as the other hand points to haarp "


http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/2012/10/23/03/53/italy-scientists-guilty-in-quake-trial




Six Italian scientists and a government official have been found guilty of multiple manslaughter for underestimating the risks of a killer earthquake in L'Aquila in 2009.


They were sentenced to six years in jail on Monday in a watershed ruling in a case that has provoked outrage in the international science community.

The experts were also ordered to pay more than nine million euros ($A11.5 million) in damages to survivors and inhabitants. Under the Italian justice system, the seven will remain free men until they have exhausted two chances to appeal the verdict.

Some commentators had warned that any convictions would dissuade other experts from sharing their expertise for fear of legal retribution.

Prosecutor Fabio Picuti had asked for jail sentences of four years for each defendant for failing to alert the population of the walled medieval town of L'Aquila to the risks, days before the 6.3-magnitude quake killed 309 people.

[eni-al]

I don't quite see how they can really be that much responsible, earthquakes are quite unpredictable, even with tremors. Perhaps the warning should have been put out anyway, better safe than sorry, though then you get accused of causing panic. You can't win.
Surely if you are living in a earthquake prone area, you learn what to do and take action when needed, responsibility lies with you and others around to keep safe during the event. People seem to both rely far too much on others for safety, and then when something happens, they need to blame to someone else.
Maybe there could be more to this, maybe if the data is analysed by others, see whether they could determine if the earthquake scale could be determined.

[bennycog]

sending them to jail and giving them an 11 million dollar fine is atrocious. do you think this will spread into other countries scientific community?

[KiwiElf]

AFP Updated October 23, 2012, 9:47 am

Judge considers verdict in Italy earthquake case

An Italian judge is considering the verdict in a case that accuses six scientists and a government official of failing to give adequate warning of an earthquake which killed 308 people in 2009. Sarah Sheffer reports.

L'AQUILA, Italy (AFP) - Six Italian scientists and a government official were sentenced to six years in jail on Monday for multiple manslaughter in a watershed ruling that found them guilty of underestimating the risks of a killer earthquake in 2009.

They were also ordered to pay more than nine million euros (almost $12 million) in damages to survivors in the devastated medieval town of L'Aquila in a case that has sparked outrage in the international science community.

Seismologists in Italy and beyond were horrified by the unprecedented sentence and argued that all science was being put on trial.

Under the Italian justice system, the seven remain free until they have exhausted two chances to appeal the verdict.

Prosecutor Fabio Picuti had asked for jail sentences of four years for each defendant for failing to alert the population of the walled medieval town to the risks, days before the 6.3-magnitude quake that killed 309 people.

"I am crestfallen, desperate. I thought I would be acquitted. I still don't understand what I'm accused of," said Enzo Boschi, who was the head of Italy's national geophysics institute (INGV) at the time.

All seven defendants were members of the Major Risks Committee which met in L'Aquila on March 31, 2009 -- six days before the quake devastated the region, tearing down houses and churches and leaving thousands of people homeless.

Picuti had slammed the experts for providing "an incomplete, inept, unsuitable and criminally mistaken" analysis, which reassured locals and led many to stay indoors when the first tremors hit.

"This is a historic sentence, above all for the victims," said lawyer Wania della Vigna, who represents 11 plaintiffs, including the family of an Israeli student who died when a student residence collapsed on top of him.

"It also marks a step forward for the justice system and I hope it will lead to change, not only in Italy but across the world," she said.

The bright blue classroom-sized temporary tribunal in L'Aquila -- built on an industrial estate after the town's historic court was flattened in the quake -- was packed with lawyers, advisors and international media for the verdict.

Four of the defendants were in court, as well as a small group of survivors.

Aldo Scimia, whose mother was killed, welled up as the verdict was read out.

"We cannot call this a victory. It's a tragedy, whatever way you look at it, it won't bring our loved ones back," he said.

"I continue to call this a massacre at the hand of the state, but at least now we hope that our children may live safer lives."

Some commentators had warned that any convictions would dissuade other experts from sharing their expertise for fear of legal retribution.

"We are deeply concerned. It's not just seismology which has been put on trial but all science," Charlotte Krawczyk, president of the seismology division at the European Geosciences Union (EGU), told AFP.

"All scientists are really shocked by this," said Krawczyk. "We are trying to organise ourselves and come up with a strong statement that could help so that the scientists do not have to go to jail."

The current INGV head Stefano Gresta also said the trial had set a legal precedent which would have serious repercussions across the science world.

"What scientist will want to express his opinion knowing that he could finish in prison?" he asked.

Filippo Dinacci, lawyer for the-then deputy director of the Civil Protection agency Bernardo De Bernardinis and its seismic risk office chief Mauro Dolce, said it was "difficult to understand" the verdict -- after criticising the charges last week as something out of "medieval criminal law".

The government committee met after a series of small tremors in the preceding weeks had sown panic among local inhabitants -- particularly after a resident began making worrying unofficial earthquake predictions.

Italy's top seismologists were called to evaluate the situation and De Bernardinis gave press interviews saying the seismic activity in L'Aquila posed "no danger".

"The ruling in my opinion is not fair. We will certainly be appealing," said Alessandra Stefano, lawyer for the head of the European centre of earthquake engineering Gian Michele Calvi.

Over 5,000 members of the scientific community sent an open letter to President Giorgio Napolitano denouncing the trial against colleagues for failing to predict a quake - a feat widely acknowledged to be impossible.

"Seismologists are more or less reconciled to the fact that the chances of predicting when a large earthquake is going to strike are somewhat more remote than finding the Holy Grail," said Roger Musson at the British Geological Survey, calling the verdict "unbelievable".

The other defendants are Giulio Selvaggi, head of the INGV's national earthquake centre in Rome; Franco Barberi from Rome's University Three and Claudio Eva from the University of Genoa.

About 120,000 people were affected by the quake, which destroyed the city's historic centre and medieval churches as well as surrounding villages.
L'Aquila resident Ortense, whose sister was killed in the quake, said: "We didn't come here to get revenge, these men are all family men. But it does bring some comfort to know that someone will pay the price for misleading us."

Kiwis among supporters for jailed quake scientists
Newstalk ZB staff, Newstalk ZB October 23, 2012, 10:39 am

http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/top-stories/15185593/kiwis-among-supporters-for-jailed-quake-scientists/

New Zealand researchers were among the 5,000 who signed a letter of support for the scientists who've been sent to jail for failing to predict an earthquake.

Six scientists and a government official have each been sentenced to six years' jail after failing to warn the Italian town of L'Aquila about the earthquake that killed 309 people.

Eighty-one New Zealanders signed a letter of support for the Italian researchers when the case went to trial in May.

GNS Science spokesman John Callan says Italy has a very different system to New Zealand.

And GNS scientist Kelvin Berryman says it's hard to link that to New Zealand as the trial dealt with factors that don't actually exist here.

"It's a very different arrangement of that legal system with the roles and responsibilities of the officials (if) it was a formally established committee, which we don't have in New Zealand.'

He says it's nothing for New Zealand's officials to be concerned about, but it does provide some lessons.

"I don't think it's appropriate for government or other agencies to look to protect unnecessarily scientists - we have protection if we're doing our work professionally."

Kelvin Berryman believes we have better lines of communication than they do in Italy.

Newstalk ZB's Italy correspondent Jo McKenna says this incredible decision has shocked the scientific community around the world, but this case was about more than just getting predictions right.

"These people were telling people not to worry, to go home, relax with a glass of wine, and for that reason I think they're really being held accountable."
Jo McKenna says seismologists around the world fear their colleagues have been used as scapegoats - and worry that scientists will be too afraid to give information in case they get it wrong.

[ThePythonicCow]

this is a massive debate.. imagine the scientists that will not even bother to predict any damagable outcome of an earthquake at all. giving people no security of how stable their homes and surrounding land are..
i feel for the scientists and i wonder just, if that earthquake had to happen at all.
" pointing to my nose as the other hand points to haarp "



AFP Updated October 23, 2012, 9:47 am

Judge considers verdict in Italy earthquake case

An Italian judge is considering the verdict in a case that accuses six scientists and a government official of failing to give adequate warning of an earthquake which killed 308 people in 2009.

I just merged these two threads.

However I like the specificity of the second thread's title more than the generic (though quite justified) outrage of the first thread's title ("On trial for what the ? "), so I applied the second title "Medieval Laws at Work - Italian scientists sentenced to jail in quake trial" to the resulting merged thread.

[KiwiElf]

You were reading my mind Paul - thank you - was just about to ask you to do so (I initially missed Benny's Post - sorry Benny! ;)

[bennycog]

haha its ok kiwi.. if my title showed some more i guess you would have seen it.. my title portrayed how stunned i was at the article..

[mosquito]

Stunned Benny, yes that about sums it up,, except it isn't quite strong enough. More and more I find myself wondering if I've somehow managed to incarnate inside a trashy novel, written by an imbecile.

[Flash]

Stunned Benny, yes that about sums it up,, except it isn't quite strong enough. More and more I find myself wondering if I've somehow managed to incarnate inside a trashy novel, written by an imbecile.

Feeling is shared here.

I wonder if the will is not to shut up any scientist claims, throughout the world. I hope they will counter sue to recuperate the lost income and reputation when this is over.

[Hervé]

Me think one needs to dig further into that case since there indeed was another scientist who gathered mounting evidence that an earthquake was about to happen... and HE was the one being told to shut up by the so-called government official and these other scientists. Hence, the latter knew about the evidence and didn't do sh!t about it... whence the manslaughter verdict.

[Carmody]

This, of course, means that all politicians are now facing jail terms, for 'speculation', are they not? Prosecution for crimes against constituents... has just been given a boost, in these modern times.

Make a bad call as a politician: go to jail.

[Arrowwind]

Probably the people who really need to be taken to court are the city managers who allowed buildings to be made that were not built to earthquake code regulations or reinforced properly according to code.
All regulations in California require code regulations on structures. Its not the scientists fault that these people died in Italy, most likely city and county managers who ignored the potentials for quakes and deaths from inadequate building codes.

This whole case is a folly and I feel sorry for those who promote such incredible ignorance and those who suffer from it.

[Robert J. Niewiadomski]

I don't know... It is tricky one... If they are sentenced it will open door to suing genetic engineers for putting our food supply in danger of total collapse due to introducing GM organisms in the wild...:confused:

[G.Deluca]

to think that they wanted to arrest the one that predicted the eathquake too, for creating alarm in the population,silly

[bennycog]

This, of course, means that all politicians are now facing jail terms, for 'speculation', are they not? Prosecution for crimes against constituents... has just been given a boost, in these modern times.

Make a bad call as a politician: go to jail.

i also thought this too, amongst other wrought feelings.. and this goes for your always knowledgable and valuable input too Robert J.
would it be good, because would it mean that some people that actually deserve it are going to get served time with initial casualties. Or would it be bad because those willing to care and help out a little can now be identified as ones who going to be punished ?
horrible outcome so far though..
i feel this is one of those many defining points that we have come to recognise here in avalon..

[Robert J. Niewiadomski]

This, of course, means that all politicians are now facing jail terms, for 'speculation', are they not? Prosecution for crimes against constituents... has just been given a boost, in these modern times.

Make a bad call as a politician: go to jail.
Ukraine has done just that. They jailed former PM Julia Tymoszenko for political decission. And they were met with the outcry of the rest of the civilised Europe...

[Joe Akulis]

This was a very interesting story when I saw some of the headlines yesterday. Some of it reminded me of that movie Dante's Peak, when Pierce Brosnan wants to put the town on alert and then his boss comes in and tells everyone that everything is fine, and there's no need to panic, and chastises Brosnan for jumping the gun. One of the most useful tidbits I've found that sheds some more light on the real story comes from this link here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/oct/22/scientists-convicted-manslaughter-earthquake

There is a commenter at the bottom of the article who posted this:


I think some facts about this will reveal that this is NOT about putting science on trial or going back to the Middle Ages - and I have been following this trial since the beginning here, in L'Aquila

This is not about failing to predict a disaster. And the state prosecution made this VERY clear. It is about the fact that these scientists predicted a non-earthquake. They reassured the population that a) a seismic swarm was a good thing because it released energy that could otherwise lead to a large shock and that b) no large earthquake was likely to occur; it could not be ruled out, they said, but it was unlikely. One of them even told a local television channel people should sit back and relax with a good glass of Montepulciano wine.

The information furnished - it's a discharge of energy which will render a large shock more likely - contradicted many scientific findings, so one could argue this is in fact a trial attempting to protect science. One of the members of the commission, Boschi, even contradicted a scientific paper he himself wrote in the 1990s, predicting a large earthquake with a probability of 1 in the next 20 years for L'Aquila.

The people in the city were terrified after months of ongoing shocks. And they used to always leave their houses and sleep outside when earthquakes woke them up at night. But when in the night between the 5th and 6th of April two smaller shocks at 11pm and 1am occurred, many parents said to their children "don't worry, the scientists tell us that it's good we have so many small shocks, we no longer have to go outside" - and two hours later their children died in the devastating 6.3 major shock.

It is these parents, the relatives of the victims, that want to explicitly prevent that this form of botched science could ever happen again to people elsewhere in the country, or in the world, and so they insisted on this trial. They say "we all have blood on our hands, we told our children to stay inside, and we can never undo this - but we don't want this to happen to anyone else". And so putting these scientists on trial will also guarantee that in the future political considerations can no longer usurp scientific ones - this is what also happened in this case, when the head of the national civil protection agency called the members of this scientific commission and told them they had to "calm down" the population worried by the earthquakes. Guido Bertolaso, the head of the civil protection agency, told these scientists that their meeting was just a media operation to tranquilize these "imbeciles" who were worried about a pending, large earthquake.

When Boschi, the country's leading seismologist, was asked by the judge why he followed what his boss, the head of the civil protection agency, told him to tell people, even if it went against his own better judgement, Boschi responded: "when my boss tells me to go somewhere and say A, then I go there and say A". This is also true: these scientists permitted themselves to be politicised - and that is why they were convicted.


And the person who posted that comment goes on to reply to various other commenters, and I think does a great job of explaining some of the reasons for the guilty verdicts, but he takes a lot of heat for it. He also mentions that yes, there are separate court cases for contractors as a lot of people have been saying it should be the people who built the wimpy buildings on a fault line who should be the ones in trouble.

The whole thing to me is just one big farce of blame gaming. Tell someone a quake could happen, get in trouble. (aka. Giampaolo Giuliani) Tell someone not to worry, get in trouble. Makes for some great theater.

[bennycog]

from seeker's post..
"" The people in the city were terrified after months of ongoing shocks. And they used to always leave their houses and sleep outside when earthquakes woke them up at night. But when in the night between the 5th and 6th of April two smaller shocks at 11pm and 1am occurred, many parents said to their children "don't worry, the scientists tell us that it's good we have so many small shocks, we no longer have to go outside" - and two hours later their children died in the devastating 6.3 major shock. ""

im sure the commentor was ad-libbing to his words.. it probaly was a good thing that many smaller quakes were preventing a much much larger one.. i do not think they would have specifically told them not to go outside, it would be like saying do not prepare for a bushfire..
it is peoples choices and experiences that might have got them caught in a crappy situation..

[Joe Akulis]

from seeker's post..
"" The people in the city were terrified after months of ongoing shocks. And they used to always leave their houses and sleep outside when earthquakes woke them up at night. But when in the night between the 5th and 6th of April two smaller shocks at 11pm and 1am occurred, many parents said to their children "don't worry, the scientists tell us that it's good we have so many small shocks, we no longer have to go outside" - and two hours later their children died in the devastating 6.3 major shock. ""

im sure the commentor was ad-libbing to his words.. it probaly was a good thing that many smaller quakes were preventing a much much larger one.. i do not think they would have specifically told them not to go outside, it would be like saying do not prepare for a bushfire..
it is peoples choices and experiences that might have got them caught in a crappy situation..

Possibly. But it sounds like he's from L'Aquila, and he seems to be the most informed on the situation, out of all the material I have read so far.

[KiwiElf]

Top Italian scientists resign in protest at quake ruling
AFP Updated October 24, 2012, 5:32 am

http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/world/15193178/italy-disaster-body-chief-quits-in-protest-at-quake-ruling/

Italian Scientists Guilty In Quake Trial

Six scientists in Italy have been found guilty of manslaughter after making reassuring statements ahead of a deadly earthquake.

Buildings in the village of Onna damaged in the 2009 Italian earthquake, seen on October 22. A manslaughter conviction for six scientists and a government official for underestiamting earthquake risks has provoked deep anger and concern in the global science community, with top experts warning of the repercussions.

ROME (AFP) - 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."

All seven defendants were members of the Major Risks Committee which met in L'Aquila on March 31, 2009 - six days before the 6.3-magnitude quake devastated the region, killing 309 people and leaving thousands homeless.

One of the seven, Mauro Dolce, resigned as head of the Civil Protection's seismic risk office on Tuesday, and the rest of the committee were preparing to follow suit, according to Maiami.

Committee member Roberto Vinci from the National Research Council said he had resigned "to show support for those who, perhaps having reacted with a certain naivety and certainly under great pressure, have been accused of manslaughter".

Michael Halpern of the US-based Union of Concerned Scientists said that without the right to speak freely, they would be vulnerable to scapegoating and persecution.

"Scientists need to be able to share what they know - and admit what they do not know - without the fear of being held criminally responsible should their predictions not hold up," he said in a blog.

The appeal hearings are due to take place in the final months of 2013, according to Marcello Melandri, lawyer for Enzo Bosci, the head of Italy's national geophysics institute (INGV) at the time of the quake.

"We will wait to read the grounds for the verdict and then the defence lawyers will work on the appeal, hoping for a better outcome," he said.

"I am still incredulous," he said of judge Marco Belli's decision to give the scientists an even harsher sentence than the four years called for by the prosecutor.

The defendants were also ordered to pay more than nine million euros (almost $12 million) in damages to survivors.

In L'Aquila and the surrounding towns, where rubble from crumbled houses and churches still lies in vast piles in off-limit zones, survivors and families of those killed said they were shocked by the reaction.

"There has not been any trial against science," said Anna Bonomi, spokeswoman for the 3and32 survivors' group which has campaigned for justice.

"If anything, there has been a trial against a system of power," she said, referring to the widely-held belief that the government had conjured up a media-friendly reassuring message to calm skittish citizens before the quake.

"They may convince Italians (that the trial was unfair) but they will not convince us residents: they played with people's lives," she said.

Maiami said that rather than blaming the scientists, prosecutors should be going after the architects and builders who put up poorly built apartments.

It is "deeply wrong that there is no investigation into who constructed houses in a seismic zone in such an inadequate fashion," he said.

Geophysicist Dario Albarello, who heads a project into short-term quake forecasts for the INGV, said "it is not earthquakes that kill, it's badly built buildings that collapse," and described the trial as "a witch hunt."

The government committee met in 2009 after a series of small tremors in the preceding weeks had sown panic among local inhabitants - particularly after a resident began making worrying unofficial earthquake predictions.

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.

About 120,000 people were affected by the quake, which destroyed the city's historic centre and medieval churches as well as surrounding villages.

In May this year, northeast Italy was hit by two earthquakes which devastated churches, buildings and factories, leaving 25 people dead and over 15,000 people homeless.

[Joe Akulis]

The reason the people of L'Aquila are shocked by the reaction is probably because they are accustomed to reading news from actual journalists who actually engage in journalism. :-)

Instead, what everyone else gets from most of the popular outlets is junk. Most of it is geared--through incompetence or by intent--at eliciting the exact response that "Maiami, one of Italy's top physicists" rendered. He and everyone else who reads the "news" thinks those found guilty were just scapegoats and innocent victims of a witch hunt. When in reality, they are no different than Downey and Dawson from A Few Good Men. Downey and Dawson were were found guilty of conduct unbecoming an officer, because in Dawson's words, "We were supposed to stand up for those who couldn't stand up for themselves."

Those scientists in Italy were told to do something by one of their superiors. To say things to the community to calm them down and convince them there was no reason to be fearful of the tremors. They went along with the order even though they knew it was wrong. They should have stood up for those who were being put in danger by a bureaucrat at the civil protection agency.

The damage being done by mainstream news outlets doesn't end there. They also have Maiami believing that: "...prosecutors should be going after the architects and builders who put up poorly built apartments."

If any journalist reporting on the situation would spend any effort at all, they might find that, according to one source, "...there are various other court cases relating to construction mistakes etc. They are currently happening. Last week, the first sentence came, convicting an engineer to three and a half years in prison, for manslaughter."

[MorningSong]

...for NOT predicting the devastating earthquake in Aquila 2009!

Supposedly, there is no way to effectively predict when and exactly where an earthquake will occur, yet the death of over 300 Italians hangs over the head of a handful of seismic scientists who didn't push the panic button soon enough (in other words, they gotta blame someone).


Will Italy's L'Aquila quake verdict have a chill on science?

An Italian court found a group of Italian scientists guilty of manslaughter for failing to give adequate warnings of a massive earthquake.

By Nick Squires, Correspondent / October 24, 2012

Rome

Finding a group of Italian scientists guilty of multiple manslaughter charges for failing to give adequate warnings of a massive earthquake in 2009 will paralyze the country’s scientific community, critics of the controversial case say.

Scientists will either refuse to give advice on the likelihood of natural disasters, or release the most extreme forecasts of floods, earthquake, and volcano eruptions in order to cover their backs.

That would create unnecessary panic and false alarms in a country that is known for its high levels of seismic activity as well for having two large, brooding volcanoes that could blow at any time – Mt. Etna in Sicily and Mt. Vesuvius, which overshadows Naples.

The warnings came after six scientists and a senior public official were found guilty on Monday of providing inadequate warnings of the 6.3 magnitude quake which devastated the central Italian town of L’Aquila and surrounding villages in April 2009.

The quake, which struck after the region had been rattled by low level tremors for weeks, killed more than 300 people and left tens of thousands homeless.

The scientists, some of the leading geologists in Italy, were all members of the Major Risks Committee and attended a meeting in L'Aquila six days before it was hit by the massive quake.

Prosecutors in the trial claimed that experts had given "incomplete, imprecise, and contradictory" advice about the risk of a major quake.

They protested that they simply gave the facts and stated clearly that quakes could neither be predicted nor entirely ruled out in such a seismically active zone....

The group was sentenced to six years in prison after being found guilty by a court in L’Aquila of involuntary manslaughter and downplaying the risks of a large earthquake hitting the Abruzzo region, of which L’Aquila is the capital.

They were also ordered to pay nearly $12 million in damages to survivors. L’Aquila’s once handsome medieval center remains a jumble of dust and rubble, amid endless wrangling over how to fund rebuilding should be paid for.
Will all scientists become alarmists?

Fear of ending up in the dock would dissuade scientists from giving any advice at all, or force them to err on the side of alarmism, giving the worst case scenario so that they can never be accused of underestimating a risk, experts said.

That would “generate an exponential increase in alarms that will cause deep distrust in those who issue them, and panic among the general population,” said Franco Gabrielli, the head of the Civil Protection Agency, which responds to natural disasters.

"It is easy to imagine the effect of this incident on all those asked to assume responsibility in these sectors,” he added in a statement.

The verdicts could lead to “paralysis” in the forecasting and prevention of natural catastrophes, he added.

Italian scientists “of the highest caliber will hold back from doing their jobs, so that no professional opinions will be offered at all,” said Luciano Maiami, the head of the Major Risks Committee, who resigned in protest on Tuesday along with his deputy, Mauro Rosi.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2012/1024/Will-Italy-s-L-Aquila-quake-verdict-have-a-chill-on-science

P.S. My own personal opinion is they the scientists DID have some responsability in the number of people hurt when this EQ finally did rip....the swarms of quakes had gone on for a long time and they had NOT evacuated or made arrangements to have extra support for antique buildings IN THE CASE OF.... Not to mention the non-seismic scientist who DID predict the EQ and was accused/arrested and charged of causing "unnecessary hysteria".

[Hervé]

...for NOT predicting the devastating earthquake in Aquila 2009!

[...]

.... Not to mention the non-seismic scientist who DID predict the EQ and was accused/arrested and charged of causing "unnecessary hysteria".


Hi MorningSong,

You might want to merge your thread with this one: Medieval Laws at Work - Italian scientists sentenced to jail in quake trial (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?51185-Medieval-Laws-at-Work-Italian-scientists-sentenced-to-jail-in-quake-trial)

[MorningSong]

The percussions of this judiciary case are very important for all of us.... awaken! oh you sleepers! We don't know BLEEP!

Another good article:


Locking up scientists won’t stop earthquakes

By Tom Chivers Science Last updated: October 24th, 2012

From Wednesday's paper: No one could have predicted L’Aquila – and false warnings are as bad as no warnings

Of all the natural disasters that mankind faces, earthquakes are the least susceptible to prediction. Hurricanes and tropical storms can be tracked by satellites; tsunamis, sometimes, can be detected while they are far enough from land to give people time to get to higher ground. Even volcanoes frequently telegraph an upcoming eruption: in the months ahead of Mount St Helens’s eruption in 1980, the mountain itself swelled and bulged as magma gathered below the surface. But despite hundreds of years of old wives’ tales, and, more recently, serious research, even the most devastating earthquakes are pretty much as unpredictable in 2012 as they were in prehistoric times.

Which makes it all the stranger that, in L’Aquila, central Italy, six scientists and a government official have been convicted of manslaughter and jailed for six years for giving “inadequate” assessment of the risks ahead of a devastating quake in 2009 that killed 309 people in the city.

The prosecution’s case is that the group gave “generic and ineffective … incomplete, imprecise, and contradictory information” about the risks of an earthquake. They claim that 29 of the dead in L’Aquila intended to leave the city, after it was rocked by dozens of small tremors in the days before the quake, but were persuaded to stay in their homes by a statement given by Bernardo De Bernardinis, the government official, which said that “the scientific community tells me there is no danger because there is an ongoing discharge of energy” from the small tremors. That was wrong: there was a danger. But the scientists who advised him had said something different – that there was an increased risk of a major earthquake in the region, in the light of those small tremors, but that it was impossible to say anything more precise than that about the time or the place. That information may have been “generic and ineffective”, but it was also the most that could be credibly said. It is true that before about half of major earthquakes, there is a series of smaller tremors such as those felt in L’Aquila. But while that sounds important with the benefit of hindsight, this fact has almost no predictive power: only about one time in 50 will a series of minor tremors herald a big one.

Other methods have been put forward as possible means of predicting earthquakes. Research is continuing into seismic anisotropy, which measures the stress in rocks. It is also suggested that radon gas is released ahead of a large quake. But none of these possibilities has been shown to work with any reliability, and a wildly oversensitive earthquake detector is as bad as none at all. A series of false alarms would disrupt everyday life, and instil a sense of fire-drill apathy when the real thing comes along.

This is an attack on scientific independence that could have far-reaching effects. As Alan Leshner, the CEO of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, said in an open letter to the president of Italy: “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 prediction that can be reliably used to warn citizens of an impending disaster.”

Seismological science may not be able to predict precisely when and where an earthquake will strike, but it can highlight periods and areas of high risk, and offer ways of reducing that risk and mitigating damage, like well-designed and enforced building codes in earthquake zones. Italy’s apparent decision to blame seismologists for an act of nature has the potential to drive an entire scientific community out of precisely the country where its work is most needed.

Unfortunately, it is also a country which takes scientific evidence less seriously than many others in its national discourse, one in which a major murder investigation debated seriously whether or not the suspect Amanda Knox was influenced by Satan. Local coverage of the disaster has focused on a man called Gioacchino Giuliani, a technician in a physics lab. He had been warning locals that a quake was coming; and if he could, the papers asked, why couldn’t the scientists? But his prediction, using the radon gas method discussed above, was out by a week and several miles. More importantly, he was probably just lucky: he had made at least two false alarms, and it seems highly implausible to say that he has single-handedly solved the problem of earthquake prediction that has evaded science for centuries.

There are many things that could have been done better in the build-up to L’Aquila. Thomas Jordan, a professor of earth sciences writing in New Scientist, points out that Italy (together with every other seismically active country) has no good system of short-term forecasts, to inform the public when the risk of quakes has gone up – the overall risk will always remain low, but making the information available would allow people to decide for themselves how to deal with it. That is the sort of sensible lesson that can be learnt from the tragedy. Locking up a group of scientists for not doing the impossible is both stupid and counterproductive.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tomchiversscience/100186314/locking-up-scientists-wont-stop-earthquakes/

[MorningSong]

Oh, shoot...sorry 'bout that... hadn't seen that.....oops....

Mods, do what you will....

[Marianne]

...for NOT predicting the devastating earthquake in Aquila 2009!

[...]

.... Not to mention the non-seismic scientist who DID predict the EQ and was accused/arrested and charged of causing "unnecessary hysteria".


Hi MorningSong,

You might want to merge your thread with this one: Medieval Laws at Work - Italian scientists sentenced to jail in quake trial (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?51185-Medieval-Laws-at-Work-Italian-scientists-sentenced-to-jail-in-quake-trial)


Oh, shoot...sorry 'bout that... hadn't seen that.....oops....

Mods, do what you will....

Threads merged.

[Joe Akulis]

The damage from the lamestream media continues.

They were not found guilty of being unable to predict an earthquake. They were not found guilty because they should have issued some warnings and neglected to.

As I was saying earlier, it's because they were told by a superior from Italy's Civil Protection Agency to calm down the people by telling them they had nothing to worry about. The scientists knew that the minor quake swarms were indeed a cause for concern, but they caved in to pressure from their boss, and actually went out and told people they had nothing to fear from the recent spate of minor quake swarms. As evidenced by this one quote from a source in L'Aquila:

When Boschi, the country's leading seismologist, was asked by the judge why he followed what his boss, the head of the civil protection agency, told him to tell people, even if it went against his own better judgement, Boschi responded: "when my boss tells me to go somewhere and say A, then I go there and say A".


I think I'm going to go start a thread about how most internet news outlets are only interested in getting you to click on their headline. They generate ad revenue by the number of visitors to their pages. So they are more than happy to let people think a bunch of scientists got thrown in jail in a barbaric backwoods town because they weren't able to predict a deadly earthquake. It salacious stuff! Who wouldn't click on it?

[bennycog]

yes i knew it was not because they did not predict it.. that would be totally insane and cause anarchy at any level.. it is still preposterous to have a court rule that because people were not constantly warned that they should go to jail..

there is common sense that has to be involved.. i think that the duty of care we all expected to have for each other, is overtaken by mountains of paperwork and the fear of being sued and the fear of losing a job.. it is normal now to have your soul manipulated

[Flash]

Yet, if they obeyed the orders of their burocrat govenrment boss (most probably government in that field), it is the boss who should be jailed isn't it?

When an office, a team, is led by fear, there is no doubt things like that happen. The leader is the one who caused the problem while not listening to the experts, he gave the order, he should take the responsibility. Where has he been judge, if he has???

[Joe Akulis]

During the trial, a piece of the prosecution's case involved a tapped phone conversation in which a guy named Bertolaso instructed Daniela Stati - the regional head of the civil protection agency responsible for summoning the meeting of seizmologists in L'Aquila - to use this as a media stunt to "shut people up". The state prosecution, also in L'Aquila, is currently preparing a trial for Bertolaso. So don't worry, the boss is in hot water too.

People are not as insane as the news media would have you believe. They don't care about the truth. They just want your clicks.

Keep in mind, during the trial, they proved there were at least 30 people who were always in the habit of leaving their homes during a tremor. Makes sense to me. Some people run and stand in a doorway. But if you don't trust the structure itself, you'd get outside, just to be safe. These people stopped doing that specifically because some scientists came in and reassured them that when tremors were happening that they could relax, no need to worry, sit back and have a glass of wine. (One of them actually said that on TV.) So at least 30 people started taking that advice and died. Not because someone didn't predict the big one. And not because there weren't enough warnings that a big one might happen. It was because seizmologists were telling them specifically that they did NOT need to be worried about a big one.

The real question to me is, why would the seizmologists go along so willingly with the effort to tell people not to worry. It was also shown during the trial that they understood that lots of small quakes can sometimes signal a prelude to a big one. This should have bothered them... Were they bribed? Were they threatened somehow? I haven't found out much about why they would do that, other than one guy saying that if his boss tells him to do something he does it. So, perhaps they were threatened with their jobs or something.

[Robert J. Niewiadomski]

Source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22439-bugged-phone-deepens-controversy-over-italian-quake.html?full=true

Bugged phone deepens controversy over Italian quake
19:05 29 October 2012 by Laura Margottini and Michael Marshall

The story isn't over yet. Last Monday, six Italian seismologists and a civil protection official were sentenced to six years in prison for manslaughter, for falsely reassuring the public that a major earthquake would not happen. But two recorded phone calls involving a more senior official suggest that the whole story has not been told about meetings held in the week prior to the earthquake and after the event.

Wiretap evidence suggests that Guido Bertolaso, then a chief of civil protection, ordered one of the defendants to issue a reassuring statement. A newly released audio recording also appears to show Bertolaso trying to conceal information in the aftermath of the quake.

Franco Coppi, who legally represents Giulio Selvaggi, one of the convicted seismologists, calls Bertolaso the "great absent member of the trial". "All these scientists were sent to L'Aquilla with a precise task," he told New Scientist. "Given that they are considered responsible for insufficient communication, it would have been important as well to consider what mandate Bertolaso gave them."

The case relates to a magnitude-6.3 earthquake that struck the Italian town of L'Aquila on 6 April 2009, killing more than 300 people. A week before, the six seismologists met to discuss the risk of a quake, following months of small tremors. They concluded it was possible a major quake was on the way, but the evidence was inconclusive. Later, a civil protection official, Bernardo De Bernardinis, gave a statement saying there was little or no risk.

The trial was not about the seismologists' failure to predict the earthquake, as earthquake prediction is currently impossible. Rather it was about the failure to communicate the small but real risk of a major quake. Reassured by the statements, people stayed indoors instead of sleeping outside, putting them in more danger.

Caught on tape
Bertolaso, De Bernardinis's superior, had previously his phone tapped as part of an unrelated investigation by the Italian authorities. In January this year the Italian newspaper La Repubblica obtained a recording of a key conversation between Bertolaso and one of his officials (listen to it on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCBp8Z42Etk)).

In the recording, translated here, Bertolaso says: "I told him [De Bernardinis] to schedule a meeting in L'Aquila about this story of this swarm quake[…] to immediately silence any imbecile's allegations, concerns and so on." He continues: "That is a media operation, you understand? So they, […] the leading experts of earthquakes, they will say: it is normal, these are phenomena that often occur, it is better to have one hundred shocks of the 4th grade on the Richter scale rather than silence, because one hundred shocks release energy and so there will never be a shock that really hurts."

Bertolaso now says he was repeating statements made about earthquakes in the past. "These types of statements have always been made in the 10 years that I have held this post. But obviously, I didn't make them, all those who participated in scientific seismic risk activities made them."

Seismologists contacted by New Scientist say the reasoning is incorrect. Small tremors on a fault do not necessarily mean a large one is coming, but neither do they necessarily make a future large earthquake less likely.

Later in the recording Bertolaso adds: "And also say that the meeting is organised not because we are scared and worried, but because we want to reassure the people. And instead of you and me talking to the population, we make the top scientists in the field of seismology talk."

Bartolaso denies telling the seismologists what to say. "The scientific committee is absolutely autonomous and independent," he told New Scientist.

After the tape emerged, Science reported that Bertolaso was also under investigation in relation to the l'Aquila earthquake. However, he was not added to the then ongoing trial, and has not been charged.

Political pressure
A new wiretap recording was published last week, again by La Repubblica. It features Bertolaso talking to Enzo Boschi, one of the convicted seismologists, on 9 April 2009 – three days after the quake. In it he appears to order Boschi to conceal information.

Bertolaso says he has been asked about the risk of further shocks, and says: "This afternoon there will be a meeting of the Great Hazard Commission at the INGV [National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology]. So I said that the meeting is aimed at this. It is obvious that the truth about the situation cannot be told." Boschi told New Scientist that the meeting was to assess the likelihood that a nearby dam on Lake Campotosto could collapse. Models determined there was no risk of this and the expert group decided there was no need to raise the alarm. In the event, the dam held.

In the recording, Bertolaso later says: "At the end you'll file a press release with the usual stuff that you can say on the subject, on the potential of a new one [earthquake], and you won't mention the real reason for this meeting. All right?"

Boschi replies: "Probably there's a bit of confusion, surely because of my fault. The true reason for the meeting is understanding how the area will evolve." And later: "Yes, yes, don't you worry. I can assure you that our attitude is extremely cooperative."

Continuing fallout
Boschi's lawyer Marcello Melandri told New Scientist that the wiretap has been misunderstood. When asked whether he thought Bertolaso should be charged, Melandri said that he should not be.

The fallout from the verdict continues. Three senior members of Italy's National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks, which is at the centre of the case, have resigned, saying it is now impossible to do their work.