A court decision in Italy has surprised many in the scientific community. How come someone predicts with a precise degree of confidence that a major earthquake will or will not strike! We all know that despite enormous amount of scientific work, scientists are still unable to predict exact time and intensity of an earthquake even in an earthquake-prone area.
The court found six local scientists guilty of misguiding the public that a major earthquake will not hit L’Aquila while a 6.3-magantitude tremor killed 309 people, April 6, 2009. Though these six scientists agreed that no major earthquake would hit the area but ruled out its impossibility, a city official however colored this as ‘out of danger’ signal for general public. Court convicted all seven (six scientists and a city official) of manslaughter and slapped a six-year jail term, were also find to the tune of € 7.8 million.
The court it seems has punished the wrong ones to for the offense of others — the city officials and the lawmakers were not touched who had failed to get the stringent building codes implemented in this Apennines region with numerous fault lines. If such a blame-shifting verdict is upheld in subsequent appeals in superior courts, then Italian court would be giving a wrong message to its scientific community that just don’t make any prediction, whether good or bad, and which may land you in jail on charge of manslaughter.
To save one’s skin, this attitude may not be limited to earthquakes only, rather it may impact other environmental forecasts like virus and disease spread predictions etc. — Masood Khan, Jubail
