Italian seismologists to be prosecuted for not predicting earthquake!!!

On 6 April 2009, an earthquake registering 6.3 on the moment magnitude scale hit the town of L'Aquila in Abruzzo, Italy. This was a tragedy, and hundreds of people died. It would be great if we could have firm predictions about every risk whose rare but tragic outcome cannot be accurately predicted, whether it is a flu outbreak, a murder, an illness, or an earthquake. Most of us recognise that this is impossible.

But some find it harder to accept. The L'Aquila prosecutor's office has now leapt into action. It has a Commissione Grandi Rischi after all – a "Commission on Big Risks" – and it's full of seismologists. If these people can't predict an earthquake, then what's the point of them? And so these seismologists are now being indicted and investigated for manslaughter, on account of their failure to warn the population that an earthquake was coming. More...

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