Italian insanity contiunes.

Six scientists and a government offical have been charged with manslaughter because they failed to predict the L'Aquila earthquake in 2009 and said a week before the earthquake that the small tremors did not mean a big one was on its way.

Dutch Lesbian

Fucking hell, Italy...

With cannon shot and gun blast smash the alien. With laser beam and searing plasma scatter the alien to the stars.

^ I was very tempted to make a joke about Berlusconi's sex drive here.

edited 20th Sep '11 7:15:54 AM by Pentadragon

For the first time ever, I am at a loss for words.

....the people suing realize theres no scentist on earth that can predict earthquakes even non-reliably yet, right?

Right?

RIGHT?!

And just as I read about the credit downgrade S&P gave it...

I now go by Graf von Tirol.

I heard about this on the radio on the way to work and I was hoping maybe I'd misheard. Well, shit.

edited 20th Sep '11 7:38:28 AM by Bur

i. hear. a. sound.

:|

ᐅᖃᐅᓯᖅ ᐊᑕᐅᓯᖅ ᓈᒻᒪᔪᐃᑦᑐᖅ

Look, the actual accusation itself is not too insane - if what they're accused of is true, it would seem like professional negligence to make what are apparently certain (or close-to-it) reassuring statements about something dangerous like that unless absolutely certain, but I am not sure you could call it manslaughter.

The real issue here is that accusations are being made which, if I'm to believe that article, are wildly, terribly inaccurate.

I still think Italy is a cool place and Berlusconi is a champion, though.

edited 20th Sep '11 7:49:27 AM by ekuseruekuseru

The actual accusation is insane. You can't predict earthquakes. A fault that's reliably gone off every 20k years for the past million might decide to go off after a few hundred with everyone in the meantime thinking they were safe.

i. hear. a. sound.

Utterly ridiculous. Why does there always have to be someone to blame? The prosecutors are fucking morons.

Requiem ~ September 2010 - October 2011 [Banned 4 Life]

Uh no. Its insane because about the best earthquake science gets at predicting earthquakes is "one could potentially happen in the next 100 years or so based on previous data trends and seismic information"

We are a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong way off from having enough scientific data on how earthquakes occur and on our own tectonic plates to be able to even predicts withing a few years of variance the likeliest moment for an earthquake.

and even then, sometimes a fault just goes off even if it completely bucks the data trend. This is like prosecuting a weather forecaster for a tornado deciding to veer wide right for 6 minutes of the predicted path and killing people.

edited 20th Sep '11 8:25:47 AM by Midgetsnowman

Only way I could see this being justified is if the scientists lied to make their predictions seem more accurate than they really were.

A champion of what? Kavorka Men?

With cannon shot and gun blast smash the alien. With laser beam and searing plasma scatter the alien to the stars.

"Prosecutors allege the defendants gave a falsely reassuring statement before the quake after studying hundreds of tremors that had shaken the city."

As opposed to the far superior alternative of risking mass panic by predicting the deaths of hundreds of people and levelling of a city? Come on, reassuring the public is massively important in such circumstances - while they're preparing for the worst behind the scenes, they tell the public to expect...well, if not the best, then something considerably less catastrophic than the worst.

With a natural disaster that may or may not occur, there might be chaos and destruction. With suicidally unavoided panic and alarm, there will be chaos and destruction. And possibly also the disaster.

My name is Addy. Please call me that instead of my username.

This story...........

..........I know that the leadership of Italy is currently runed by a idoet but.....

..........I do not know how to respond to this.

I’m a lumberjack and I’m ok. I sleep all night and work all day.

I feel misunderstood. What I'm saying is that, were the conditions outlined in the accusation reasonable, it would be a fair, if somewhat harsh, accusation. But, of course, the accusation is far from reasonable in realistic terms.

Berlusconi is a funny guy who has wacky antics and I think he is cool.

Berlusconi is a corrupt, pathetic, infuriatingly fucked up arsehole.

Boris Johnson is a good example of a comic buffoon whose foibles can be put down to...anything really, it's hard not to love him because it's impossible to take him seriously, which he himself seems to realise. Berlusconi...no, not at all. He's just a bastard.

My name is Addy. Please call me that instead of my username.

The accusation is not ridiculous at all. One should check precisely what they said and precisely which data they had available in order to find out whether the defendants are guilty or not, obviously, and I have not done that; but if they knew that there was an increased risk of an earthquake, and if they failed to report it, then they are guilty.

Look, everyone knows that you cannot predict earthquakes with precision. Neither can you predict heart attacks with precision, for that matter. But if a physician knowingly lies about the danger a patient is in (and note, I am not saying that this is what really happened in this case, just that this is what the scientists are accused of) then he commits a crime.

edited 20th Sep '11 11:07:30 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Based on the article provided by OP, at least, it seems to be the case that they weren't knowingly deceiving the public.

They couldnt know either way. the best data we have on earthquakes amounts to "this zone is overdue for an earthquake according to historical and stress data. hell if we know when it actually triggers though"

Hell, California is ridiculously overdue for a MASSIVE earthquake. all we know for sure is its about 200 years overdue and the stress in California tectonics is under huge amounts of strain and could go any minute or year. But we dont know which year or day.

edited 20th Sep '11 11:19:37 AM by Midgetsnowman

There can be early signals of an earthquake. They do not give any sort of certainty, obviously, but that's not the point.

Look, these scientists were tasked with estimating the possibility of earthquakes. If they did their job with diligence, fine, if not, they have endangered people and they are guilty. No one is accusing them of not having magical voodoo powers; they are accusing them of

The point is not that they have not predicted the earthquake; the point is that they have allegedly failed to send to the public the information that they allegedly had, or could have found. Whether this is or isn't the case is something I don't know, of course, but the accusation in itself is not ridiculous.

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

There can be warning signs, yes.

But they dont always happen.

By your logic, the people of Joplin should sue every weathercaster in the US for not giving out tornado warnings instead of watches the second even a single tornadic cloud started coalescing nearby with no indication of a tornado yet

edited 20th Sep '11 12:04:52 PM by Midgetsnowman

Sure.

And if they did not happen, and if the geologists did their job conscientiously, then they are innocent.

I am not debating about their alleged guilt — I'd need quite a bit of information, and also quite a bit more training in geology than I have, in order to even start having an opinion about that.

I am just saying that the accusation — which, as I said, is not that they did not predict the earthquake, but that they were negligent in their work — is not, in itself, stupid.

No. But if the people of Joplin hire some climatologists for their civil protection agency and these people allegedly fail to do their job and release falsely reassuring statements then this would definitely be something worth investigating.

edited 20th Sep '11 12:10:32 PM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

I think the idea of blaming them for manslaughter is stupid, though. If you live in an earthquake ready zone and you ever think you're completely safe from an earthquake occuring even if theres no obvious seismic warning signs, you're Too Dumb to Live