...for failing to predict the unpredictable.
Jailing scientists for not giving sufficient warning of the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake is a spectacularly stupid idea – Telegraph Blogs
Utterly stupid, I hope this is overturned at appeal, perhaps by a judge with a half decent education. Earthquakes simply can't be predicted; there are sometimes signs that sometimes precede an earthquake, and there are really three countries in the world where the science of seismology is so advanced that they can sometimes give useful warnings of an earthquake and they are the US, Japan and Italy; these are some of the world's best seismologists. Unfortunately some of the world's worst judges seem to be Italian. If this isn't turned over at appeal I can imagine a brain drain getting started as seismologists go somewhere that they won't be imprisoned for getting the unpredictable wrong.
But what really concerns me is that some judges in Italy, and I suspect in other countries in Europe, obviously have so little understanding of science that you may as well present scientific evidence to a donkey and then see which way the tail waggles to come to a verdict. We see more and more science involved in criminal proceedings; forensic science, DNA evidence and so on, so surely judges need to be educated in the basics of science.
Jailing scientists for not giving sufficient warning of the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake is a spectacularly stupid idea – Telegraph Blogs
Utterly stupid, I hope this is overturned at appeal, perhaps by a judge with a half decent education. Earthquakes simply can't be predicted; there are sometimes signs that sometimes precede an earthquake, and there are really three countries in the world where the science of seismology is so advanced that they can sometimes give useful warnings of an earthquake and they are the US, Japan and Italy; these are some of the world's best seismologists. Unfortunately some of the world's worst judges seem to be Italian. If this isn't turned over at appeal I can imagine a brain drain getting started as seismologists go somewhere that they won't be imprisoned for getting the unpredictable wrong.
But what really concerns me is that some judges in Italy, and I suspect in other countries in Europe, obviously have so little understanding of science that you may as well present scientific evidence to a donkey and then see which way the tail waggles to come to a verdict. We see more and more science involved in criminal proceedings; forensic science, DNA evidence and so on, so surely judges need to be educated in the basics of science.
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