Have you ever wanted to sue the weather person for his or her inaccurate predictions? Wanted to send her a bill for your ruined shoes when the day was supposed to be sunny, maybe, or send him a bill for your cancelled family reunion pavilion or tent when the weather went foul? In Italy, the government is making it happen by putting seismologists on trial for manslaughter for an earthquake in 2009 that killed 308 people.
Can you imagine where this could lead, if the charges stick or if this team of seven technicians and scientists is convicted? People would be suing weathercasters left and right for failing to predict volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and tornadoes. It’s funny, because it’s also a double-edged sword: while many people know the weather to be unpredictable, the scientists are still to blame. And isn’t Italy the country where the Pope himself, the leader of one of the biggest organized religions that denounces science on a regular basis, resides? Oh, the irony. We don’t support your spooky scientific theories, nerd people, but we will sue you when you are wrong or you fail to predict the future!
Perhaps the Italian government will start hiring fortune tellers as official consultants next.
The thing is, if these seismologists had really received some information indicating that there would be an earthquake and THEN failed to act upon it, alerting the government and citizens so that they could prepare as best they could, then perhaps they should be fined or suspended or something. But even then, being charged with the actual death of people—which was attributed to Mother Nature instead—is a pretty hefty fee to charge.
The evidence against the team suggests that, at a press conference held days before the quake, the team gave “imprecise, incomplete and contradictory information,” to the public, thereby thwarting efforts that could have been made to save the people who died.
The thing is, seismology is pretty imprecise, incomplete, and contradictory, isn’t it? I mean, where I live, on the New Madrid fault line, we keep hearing about how we are “due” for a big quake—but it’s been overdue for a while, actually. No one knows when it will hit, and that’s why we do need seismologists to keep studying it for us. Even so, like weather people, they simply cannot give us absolute certainties.
I don’t know what information they gave out during that press conference, but unless it was a blatant statement like “There will absolutely, without a doubt, be no earthquakes this week!” I don’t see how horrible it could have been. In fact, the people facing charges claim that they did indicate that a big earthquake would occur in the area soon—so perhaps it is the government that should be sued instead, for not acting in a timely fashion?
In fact, if seismologists can be sued for this, I totally think we should be able to sue the government for losing our jobs, the economy being in the toilet, healthcare, and Justin Bieber.