{"id":106,"date":"2012-10-23T08:51:05","date_gmt":"2012-10-23T13:51:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/?p=106"},"modified":"2012-10-23T08:51:05","modified_gmt":"2012-10-23T13:51:05","slug":"italian-court-convicts-seismologists-of-manslaughter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/2012\/10\/23\/italian-court-convicts-seismologists-of-manslaughter\/","title":{"rendered":"Italian Court Convicts Seismologists of Manslaughter"},"content":{"rendered":"

This just takes the cake<\/a>.\u00a0 I always figured it would be biologists first, but no, it’s the geologists.<\/p>\n

Long story short, six scientists and a government official have been convicted of manslaughter for allowing the deaths of 309 people in an earthquake.\u00a0 The earthquake happened in L’Aquila in 2009.\u00a0 The court has been hearing the case for almost a year.<\/p>\n

It took the judge 4 hours to come back with a guilty verdict.<\/p>\n

The “good news”, if there is any in this sad story, is that Italy has an automatic appeals process and no punishment can begin until the appeals process is complete.<\/p>\n

There are some really, really bad aspects to this though.\u00a0 First, of course, is that it sets an alarming and terrible precedent.\u00a0 It doesn’t matter if the court case was about the “inadequate characterization of risks” and “misleadingly reassuring about the dangers”.\u00a0 What this court has done is told scientists that, unless you are certain, don’t say anything.<\/p>\n

Guess what.\u00a0 Science isn’t about certainty.\u00a0 The vast majority of science isn’t about certainty, it’s laced with probabilities.\u00a0 We can’t know when an earthquake, volcano, new disease, extinction, or anything like that will happen.<\/p>\n

But if scientists don’t talk about, then nothing can happen.\u00a0 No new knowledge will be gained.\u00a0 What if medical professionals had to 100% certain that a procedure would both work and not do more harm than good?\u00a0 What if drug researchers had to be 100% certain that there would be no side-effects to a new drug?\u00a0 What if engineers had to be 100% certain that a structure would never fail? Heck, what if weathermen had to be 100% certain where a hurricane would hit before talking about it?<\/p>\n

Nothing would ever happen.\u00a0 That’s what.\u00a0 Progress would stop.\u00a0 The human race would stagnate at the technology level we have now… and probably regress.\u00a0 Because no medical procedure, drug, building, or even food is 100% safe all the time to everyone.<\/p>\n

I really hope that the appeals court gets this.\u00a0 These scientists are doing the best they can with the limited data we can get and the massively unpredictable nature of the planet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This just takes the cake.\u00a0 I always figured it would be biologists first, but no, it’s the geologists. Long story…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,18,6,45],"tags":[67,69,937,68],"class_list":["post-106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-government","category-science","category-society","tag-italy","tag-laquila-quake","tag-science","tag-seismologists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}