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Earthquake predictions and a triumph of scientific illiteracy in an Italian court
[Quote]:
Rarely since a Catholic inquisition in Rome condemned Galileo Galilei to spend the remainder of his days under house arrest for the heresy of teaching that the Earth revolves around the sun, has an Italian court been so wrong about science.
Today, a court in the central Italian city of L’Aquila, 380 years after that miscarriage of justice, sentenced six scientists and a government bureaucrat to six years in jail on manslaughter charges for their failure to predict a 2009 earthquake that left more than 300 people dead.
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From what I understand from geologists, if it’s a legitimate earthquake, scientists have a way to shut that whole thing down. It’s true, I studied it out, I have a few binders of scientists.
The media are all over this “failure to predict” (which is a misrepresentation, whoever originated it) – the mistake was making a categorical “go safely back to your homes” statement, at the behest of the local government.
I may be mis-remembering but there had been people camping out for some time previously because of earth tremors and warnings from a man who had been measuring radon emissions. The local authorities appeared to need to have order restored. Who better to make such reassuring noises but “trained scientists”?