Italian scientists guilty for manslaughter over earthquake prediction

On Monday, October 22^nd, the Italian court found 6 scientists and a government official guilty of manslaughter. This was no ordinary charge, as it came as a result of the men incorrectly forecasting the earthquake that struck the city of L’Aquila several years beforehand (on April 6^th, 2009). The earthquake had a magnitude of 6.3, killed over 300 people and injured more than 1500 others.

The court accused the six scientists from the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology and the member of the Civil Protection Agency guilty of giving inexact, incomplete, and contradictory information regarding the possibility of a major earthquake. A month before the earthquake, a meeting by the Great Risks commission was held regarding the small and frequent tremors that were becoming more frequent in the area. The prosecutors focused on a memo that resulted from this meeting, in which experts concluded that the coming of a major earthquake was “improbable” though it also added that the possibility of one should not be “excluded”. The citizens had also voiced their concerns over the small tremors that happened before the magnitude 6.3 earthquake, and are very angry at the fact that officials have not seriously considered their concerns and worries. The residents that were victimized by the earthquake were given a reward anywhere between 40,000 – 450,000 euros ($52,000 and $580,000 CDN). In Italy, convictions are not definitive until an appeals trial is held, where a defending body may request a change in a formal decision which in this case would be a 6 year jail-term for the 7 men.

In response to this decision by the court in L’Aquila, the chief executive of the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) wrote a letter to the Italian president Giorgio Napolitano in 2010, a year after the incident, complaining that the charges lain against the 6 scientists and a government official were “naïve and unfair”. Two scientists, Luciano Maiani (head of the National Commission for the Prediction and Prevention of Major Risks) and Mauro Dolce (director of the office that monitors volcano and earthquake threats) have resigned from their positions in order to protest the ruling made by the court. Dolce will be given another post according to a statement released by the agency. In addition, the Italian geophysics institute expressed “regret and concern” about the verdict saying that the decision “threatens to undermine one of the cornerstones of scientific research: that of freedom of investigation, of open and transparent discussion and sharing of results”. Certainly, there are many who oppose the decision made by the court.

Those who oppose the ruling by the court argue that the issue is that of a failure of communications and not calculations. Domenico Giardini who held Boschi’s position for several months last year said that the trial was about “the number of weak points in the communication train.” Boschi is one of the 7 defendants and is the former president of the National Instutute of Geophysics and Volcanology. After the verdict, Boschi said that “I am dejected, desperate. I thought I would have been acquitted. I still don’t understand what I was convicted of.”.  Ironically, it is feared that such convictions will harm the future of geological research in Italy, exactly the kind of science that will prevent future deaths from a similar cause from re occurring. According to David Spiegelhalter, a professor specializing in the public understanding of risk at Cambridge University in Britain, such a ruling may well change the way that experts voice their opinion to the public.