In a blow to science and rational thought, Italian prosecutors have succeeded in convicting seven of that country’s leading scientists of manslaughter for failing to predict the 2009 earthquake that struck central Italy. Despite objections from the world’s science community that such accurate and consistent predictions are still impossible, the government blamed the scientists for failing to alert the public that an earthquake was coming.
The earthquake killed more than 300 people. The scientists were given six-year-prison sentences for their failure as members of a national “Great Risks Commission.” The scientists were accused of giving “inexact, incomplete and contradictory information” about small tremors in the weeks and months before the earthquake.
At best, scientists insist, they can make low probability forecasts not true predictions. Yet, the court still convicted the defendants, including Enzo Boschi, former head of the national Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology. The scientists stood in disbelief at the verdict. To make matters worse, the trial was held in an Apennine town devastated by the earthquake. As a fundamental measure of due process, one would have thought a change of venue would have been in order. Instead, the Italian judiciary held the trial on the site of the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake in L’Aguila.
The verdict is an outrage to both science and the law. It will now go on appeal in the Italian system.
Yes, we’ll whet do expect from pasta eating illiterates!
Thanks idealist, …. I hope we’re not heading back to this!!!
The auto-da-fé usually began with the public proclamation of a grace period of 40 days. Anyone who was guilty or knew of someone who was guilty was urged to confess. If they were approached and charged they were then presumed guilty, and since the suspects were not allowed to look at the evidence against them, they could only assume the worst.
As Reagans attorney general Meese said (paraphrasing) “Well if he wasn’t guilty, he wouldn’t have been charged”.
David Blauw,
Wiki Auto da fé.
the judges got it mixed up with canon law prayed to the wrong saints like the scientists did. I went with new orleans and watch the earth move like THE BIBLE says. I didn’t think the horse out of town technique worked very well.
I have sent the pope emails and they pray for ME to return to HEAVEN. that should have been a good enough sign to the pope to tell the judges.
How about this one! GOD sent africa to crush italy against southern europe.
GeneH,
Did you have a berét, smoke the italian equivalent to Gauloise, and drink Poli—or whatever came out of the unlabelled bottle? Just jealousy on my part.
And in fluent italian too? 😉
—-Having a laugh at your neighbor’s antics is always fun.
—-NickS. We found our own way to that restaurant, but it helped that our hotel was around the corner up from the Pantheon piazza.
—-traffic in Rome has two modes: creep and spring for your life. Got my new Alfa convertible broadsided on wide un-trafficed boulevard by student driver, one week after purchase.
—-if Galileo (GeneH got to him first) could move, admittedly with help, us off the geocentric view and place us in a heliocentric orbit—then the italian justice system should be able to move their peninsula off that fault zone ir sits on now.
Mind over matter, and all that. Of course, if mind is not there……!
“THE REVENGE OF THE SCIENTISTS”
Scientists in every field notify the government multiple times daily that there are negative events about to occur and that the government must immediately evacuate areas and prepare and have food-stocks ready for the refugees and bring in emergency medical crews and this proliferates and multiplies and grows until the government is dismantled and everybody rebels and refuses to finance the insanity any more.
Bwaaaaahahahahahahaha!
I’m guessing there won’t be many new post grads in this field working in Italy anyway
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_by_ordeal
According to a theory put forward by Peter Leeson, trial by ordeal was surprisingly effective at sorting the guilty from the innocent.[1] Because defendants were believers, only the truly innocent would choose to endure a trial; guilty defendants would confess or settle cases instead. Therefore, the theory goes, church and judicial authorities would routinely rig ordeals so that the participants—presumably innocent—could pass them. If this theory is correct, medieval superstition was actually a useful motivating force for justice.[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compurgation
Compurgation was found in early Germanic law, in Welsh law, and in the English ecclesiastical courts until the 17th century. In common law it was substantially abolished as a defence in felonies by the Constitutions of Clarendon in 1164. The defence was still permitted in civil actions for debt and vestiges of it survived until statutory repeal at various times in common law countries, e.g. in England in 1833, and Queensland, Australia in[citation needed].
Italy is going from the enlightened minds of the Italian Renaissance, to the Delightened minds of the “New” Italian Inquisition.
A modern burning scientists at the stake.
The fallacy of composition.
Because one set of judges is psychotically ignorant of science does not mean all judges are psychotically ignorant of science.
Well, finally, a court has demonstrated the validity of my bioengineering research in the sense of “proving” that the notion of adversariality as a property of law is functionally, neurologically, psychotic.
The antidote to such functionally neurological psychosis is the objectivity of direct observation; given the fact that whatever happens actually is whatever happens whenever and wherever it actually happens, all claims to the contrary are apparently so blatantly delusional as to blind people’s awareness to the contrast between simple truth and unfathomable falsehood.
I will be able to make what I guess may be excellent use of this story as an illustration of how the mirror neuron system may aid and abet groupthink-based delusions and their resulting trauma as manifested in the blatant anti-scientific nonsense of this ludicrous decision.
And, I am now putting forth an all-out effort to put my bioengineering research into the social aspects of the trauma of the traditional “western” infant-child transition to a no-holds-barred cognitive-affective pass/fail test.
“A completely new paradigm” is what one of my doctoral committee members told me that my work seemed to be.
Or, have I been captured by delusions of grandeur comparable to those of this scientifically absurd court decision, as though those who rendered the verdict were anywhere close to the mental competence of those they adjudged as guilty?
Is any definitive test ever actually possible?
Scientists found guilty of not being omniscient.
This is like Pandoras “double wide trailer”.
Gene, No desire to live there either. I know a woman who is an art historian. She has lived in Rome for almost 30 years now and gives an earful on the problems w/ corruption and other issues. She took us to a famous restaurant in Rome near the Pantheon where all the pols and press hobnob over lunch. She pointed out this pol is a “Berlosconi puppet” this guy “is Mafia” another just got re-elected after serving time for fraud. I felt like I was back in Chicago. This woman is a former NYCer so you knows she’s not averse to giving her opinion. When she needed surgery she went back to NY not allowing an Italian doc to cut her.
As I’m sure you know, northern and southen Italy are VERY different. My family are from Naples and Bari so I’ve stayed south but need to get north. We were in Sorrento when I learned a custom that pretty much sums up Italians in that region. On New Years Eve they take all of the chipped and cracked plates, dishes, etc from the shelves and throw it out onto the alley or street. It’s supposed to be for good luck. I took a stroll New Year’s morning and it looked like Hillary Clinton had a huge blowup w/ Bill…all over town!
The prosecutor must be a Republican.
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/UnNews:Vatican_and_Pope_on_trial_over_L%27Aquila_earthquake
Well, if they were asleep at the seismograph….
With this story can the day of climate change scientists being charged w/ unsubstantiated claims be far off? Tennessee? Arkansas? Texas??
Well, it was justa truck rumbling by. One can not be too reticent about reporting facts.
They should make their announcements in a crowded theatre in that town.
EARTHQUAKE!
OMG, proof that the Italians are stilll ROME.
I hope there will never be another Italian scientist, EVER. All scientists should brain-drain themselves OUT OF THAT LAND OF LUNATICS. Beam them all up if necessary, Scotty — anything to get them out of there.
It’s one thing to punish people for covering up something that happened (as the Chinese government covered up the earthquakes they HAD predicted but not warned of) but quite another to punish people for not predicting them.
I’m not gonna predict what’s going to happen to those Italians now. Fellini’s gone already; there’s actually nothing at stake. Maybe a flood…