News organizations widely report scientists’ dismay over Italian trial result
DOI: 10.1063/PT.4.0144
Italy’s 13-month earthquake trial, Nature and other news organizations are reporting, has led to manslaughter verdicts and six-year sentences for six scientists and a government official. ‘The verdict was based on how they assessed and communicated risk before the earthquake that hit the city of L’Aquila on 6 April 2009, killing 309 people,’ Nature says.
Scientists are reacting with energetic disagreement. They point to deep underlying misunderstandings and warn about the legal result’s implications. Journalists are widely reporting these reactions.
The seven sentenced people will remain free during an appeal process. They are
* Bernardo De Bernardinis, then vice president of Italy’s Civil Protection Department, who in the meantime has become president of the Institute for Environmental Protection and Research;
* Enzo Boschi, president of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV);
* Giulio Selvaggi, director of INGV’s National Earthquake Center;
* Franco Barberi, a volcanologist at the University of Rome;
* Claudio Eva, a professor of Earth physics at the University of Genoa;
* Mauro Dolce, head of the seismic-risk office of the Civil Protection Department; and
* Gian Michele Calvi, director of the European Centre for Training and Research in Earthquake Engineering.
Nature explains:
The defendants all took part in a meeting held in L’Aquila on 31March 2009, during which they were asked to assess the risk of a major earthquake in view of many shocks that had hit the city in the previous months. The meeting was unusually quick, and was followed by a press conference where the Civil Protection Department and local authorities reassured the population, stating that minor shocks did not raise the risk of a major one. De Bernardinis said in a TV interview (recorded shortly before the meeting), ‘the scientific community tells me there is no danger because there is an ongoing discharge of energy,’ a statement that most seismologists consider to be scientifically incorrect.
According to the prosecutor, such reassurances were the reason why 29 victims who would otherwise have left L’Aquila in the following days changed their minds and decided to stay, eventually dying when their homes collapsed. The prosecutor thus indicted all seven members of the panel for manslaughter, reasoning that their ‘inadequate’ risk assessment had led to scientifically incorrect messages being given to the public, which contributed to a higher death count.
The defense argued that no causal link had been proven between the meeting and the deaths.
Here is a sampling of scientists’ reactions as reported in the media:
* The Chicago Tribune article ‘s third paragraph reported, ‘The case has drawn condemnation from international bodies including the American Geophysical Union, which said the risk of litigation may deter scientists from advising governments or even working in seismology and seismic risk assessments.’
* Fox News quoted Tom Jordan, a seismologist with the University of Southern California, who ‘chaired an international committee on earthquake forecasting convened in Italy’ after the earthquake. ‘It’s widely viewed within the scientific community that this is an unfair result. We can’t predict earthquakes. We can only forecast them with low probability.’
* In the UK, the Telegraph quoted Richard Walters of Oxford University’s Department of Earth Sciences: ‘The issue here is about miscommunication of science, and we should not be putting responsible scientists who gave measured, scientifically accurate information in prison. This sets a very dangerous precedent and I fear it will discourage other scientists from offering their advice on natural hazards and trying to help society in this way.’ The Telegraph also quoted Malcolm Sperrin, director of medical physics, Royal Berkshire Hospital: ‘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.’
* At the UK’s Daily Mail , the subhead said, ‘Scientific community condemns trial as risk of litigation may deter scientists from working on averting future earthquakes.’
* CBS News quoted Erik Klemetti, an assistant professor of geosciences at Denison University in Ohio: ‘I hope the Italians realize how backwards they are in this L’Aquila trial and its verdict.’ CBS also quoted Seth Stein, a professor of Earth sciences at Northwestern University in Illinois: ‘Our ability to predict earthquake hazards is, frankly, lousy. Criminalizing something would only make sense if we really knew how to do this and someone did it wrong.’
* The Huffington Post quoted David Spiegelhalter of the Centre for Mathematical Sciences at Cambridge University: ‘This bizarre verdict will chill anyone who gives scientific advice.’
Steven T. Corneliussen, a media analyst for the American Institute of Physics, monitors three national newspapers, the weeklies Nature and Science, and occasionally other publications. He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA’s history program, and is a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.