23 October 2012

Italian scientists jailed for not predicting the future

I am sure many of you will have heard about the Italian scientists that have been jailed for 6 months for not predicting Earthquakes.

Well I was going to write something about this, but then saw this video from Taiwan company NMA and thought it summed things up perfectly.


The Italian court convicted the six scientists and one government bureaucrat of manslaughter for not 'predicting' the devastating earthquake. People everywhere were outraged and dismayed at this step back for the scientific community.

The scientists, who are a part of the National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks, provided "inexact, incomplete and contradictory" reports on the tremors hitting L'Aquila, Italy, according to the court.

Of course, the scientists can, and will, appeal the court's decision, but this still sounds like something coming out of the 1500s. Did they learn anything from Galileo?! Let's hope they won't go after weathermen next!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

They were found guilty not primarily for failing to predict the earthquake, but for releasing a statement saying there was probably not going to be one.
They are accused of giving people a false sense of security resulting in them not taking necessary precautions.

You really should read up on it properly..

MiKo said...

I still get shivers about this, but it is not even as the Anonymous stated (which for me is equally appalling: "probably not going to be one" is fine I think). The problem is that they received political pressures to hide their opinions and to release falsely reassuring people releasing statements with which they disagreed.

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