Can I Just Tell You How Wrong This Is?

Six Italian scientists and another official who failed to correctly predict the deadly L'Aquila earthquake were convicted of manslaughter on Monday and sentenced to six years in jail.

I wonder who in the world the Italian authorities think they are going to find to do those jobs now. Since when are earthquakes really predictable?  Imagine being jailed for failing to predict one.  And even if they knew one was coming, how in the world could they have determined when it would happen?

"To predict a large quake on the basis of a relatively commonplace sequence of small earthquakes and to advise the local population to flee" would constitute "both bad science and bad public policy," said David Oglesby, an associate professor in the Earth sciences faculty of the University of California, Riverside.

Indeed.

"It's chilling that people can be jailed for giving a scientific opinion in the line of their work," Roger Musson, the head of seismic hazard and archives at the British Geological Survey, wrote in a comment published on the organization's Twitter feed.

That, too.

 After the hearing, a lawyer for one of the scientists told reporters that scientists may now, effectively, be forced to rethink how they interpret science when citizens are worried. And that, he says, will compromise their authority. “In Italy you will now see many more false alarms in such situations, because experts will choose to cry wolf when in doubt. In the end they will become less and less credible.”

And who, exactly, will that be helping?  I understand that the sentence probably does help to give closure to those who lost loved ones or property in the earthquake, but I don't see how it could do anything but stifle the research that might make the prediction better the next time.  A real shame.