Six Italian scientists have been convicted of manslaughter in the 2009 earthquake in L' Aquila, a judgement that has brought widespread criticism and concern from the public and scientific realms...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20025626
This seems really, incredibly stupid. It would be like sending a weather man to prison for not predicting a blizzard...actually that would make more sense. At least he can see the blizzard coming for days and should be able to make a decent guess...earthquakes, on the other hand, are random and nearly impossible to predict.
If there was any evidence that these guys knew that an earthquake was coming and purposefully deceived people, then throw them in jail...but what it seems they are guilty of is not knowing an earthquake was coming, having no way of knowing, telling people that they shouldn't be especially worried, and not ordering an evacuation...while it's tragic, it's definitely not the fault of some scientists.
Not that a terrible movie is a great comparison, but look at Dante's Peak. Pierce Brosnan was pretty darn sure the volcano would explode. He did tests, he saw signs, he had his gut instinct....and his boss still hesitated because he knew the fallout of falsely issuing an evactuation. It's expensive, it's a hassle, and if you're wrong, you get blamed for creating fear and confusion while wasting city resources.
I understand that, looking back, you'd have wished they would have evacuated the city to be safe...but that's far easier to say after the disaster. If it hadn't happened and they did evacuate, we'd be seeing a story of a lawsuit against the scientists, asking them to pay back the city...
This is just bad. This won't make scientists more careful or more accurate...it will simply cause them to keep their mouths shut overall.
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