Italian Scientists Found Guilty Of Manslaughter For Not Predicting Earthquake
In 2012, a year-long trial came to an end when seven Italian scientists, engineers, and officials were accused of not reacting strongly enough in the aftermath of a series of tremors that struck the L’Aquila region of Italy in early 2009. Those earthquakes killed over 300 people.
It was thought by the court that these men were doing their jobs haphazardly by not creating a countrywide panic to alert citizens of any future deadly earthquakes. This was in an area that is already frequented by seismic activity.
Some thought that there was no alert because of sentiment that the country shouldn’t be in a panic, and because no one can assuredly predict the chances of a future earthquake with smaller quakes as the only form of evidence.
But this did not stop Judge Marco Bill from reaching a guilty verdict in just four hours. The charge was “multiple manslaughter,” and the sentence was six years in prison.
The controversy centered around a meeting held by the commission a week before the earthquake. At that time, the risks were discussed following a series of small tremors in the area. Despite acknowledging the uncertainty and the impossibility of predicting earthquakes, the scientists did not convey a sufficient sense of risk to the public.
These men, all members of the National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks, did not force everyone in the area to stay in their homes and bury their heads. The men did not gain access to dire information regarding an impending earthquake, only to shield it all from becoming public knowledge, thus endangering the population.
As stated in the Commission’s memo issued after a March 31, 2009 meeting discussing the frequent seismic activity in the area, it was “improbable” a major quake was on the horizon, in much the same way a local meteorologist would say it might not rain that day. But what became problematic was, a government official, Bernardo De Bernardinis, making a public statement before the meeting suggesting that the situation was safe. And they did not course correct on that statement.
At the time, the conviction was widely criticized by the international scientific community. They deemed it a misunderstanding of the nature of earthquake prediction, which is inherently uncertain. Those in that community also argued, probably correctly, that the case set a dangerous precedent for the role of scientific advice in public policy. There was thought that it could discourage scientists from engaging in public risk assessment
Prof Malcolm Sperrin, director of Medical Physics in the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading said, “If the scientific community is to be penalised for making predictions that turn out to be incorrect, or for not accurately predicting an event that subsequently occurs, then scientific endeavour will be restricted to certainties only and the benefits that are associated with findings from medicine to physics will be stalled.”
In the end, the verdict was later overturned on appeal in 2014, clearing the scientists of the charges. That was probably for the best, but the effects of the initial verdict can’t be ignored. And the threat of conviction around this kind of prognostication has had ripple effects.
