Lovely, I think a lot of people suspected that this may have been happening, but there wasn’t the smoking gun. That is very interesting.
If someone experiences a loss as a consequence of your miscalculation, then most definitely you should be held to account, and an appropriate level of legal retribution applied.
Such a situation has a well established body of law in most industrialised countries with respect to engineering and its associated liability; I contend that the same legal standards and processes should be applied to “science”.
In the context of this discussion, there is a broader issue: that of the politicisation of science.
In recent years we have seen the emergence of the “advocate scientist”. These are scientists who adopt a particular political position, then selectively interpret the science to further their personal bias.
People who take action on the basis of the advice offered by these politicised scientists risk experiencing a loss which may be greater than they would have suffered had they received unbiased and objective advice.
Furthermore, this politicisation has diminished the credibility of all science in the eyes of the general populace, as evidenced by the growing cynicism towards science within the general population.
If scientists were held to the same standards as are engineers, and were subject to legal retribution with respect to their work, this would reduce the politicisation of science, enhance the quality of any advice given and serve to increase the confidence of the general populace in the advice they are being given.
Were these standards operative in the case of the Italian scientists, I expect the advice given would have accurately reflected both the hazard and the risk involved, and the populace would have been in a better position to tailor their individual responses; and the subsequent legal action would not have eventuated.
Do you have any concept of uncertainty at all?
This sounds nice in theory.
The weatherman said it would be cloudy the other day, and in fact it rained. My suede jacket got clobbered. I have a case to sue him in small claims?
No, and this misses the point. So long as the weather forecaster is honest about the level of expected accuracy of their forecast they are discharging their responsibilities correctly. A weather forecast that blandly asserts that there absolutely no risk of rain, and people act upon that, should be held to account. Now the reality is that currently everyone knows weather forecasts are unreliable, so the caveats are mostly assumed - but they are there implicitly.
When an engineer calculates stuff, they know to add in enough of a safety factor to cope with unexpected issues. The safety factor is itself usually prescribed as part of the domain. A scientist operating in a public capacity - such as providing advice on earthquake risk - has long since moved away from pure science. There is no nice falsifiable hypothesis or peer review here.
If a scientist is asked to provide a service based upon their scientific expertise they are really acting in exactly the same capacity as an engineer is - not as a scientist. It is worrying that many people - especially the scientist themselves don’t appreciate that this has happened. Providing expert advice is not science. It might be applying scientific results, but it isn’t science.
In most areas of science those professionals that provide expert services based upon scientific knowledge are not called scientists - they are called things like engineer and doctor. They abide by professional codes of ethics that are quite clear about not providing services that are outside of their domain of expertise, or are not trustworthy, and the professional societies hold their members to account. Where we get into trouble is in those areas where there isn’t such a code, or indeed any realisation of what the implications of providing expert advice are.
In the case of the Italian earthquake things have almost certainly got way out of hand. But if any of the scientists had qualms about the message being delivered at the press conference, they should have spoken up. I’m sure they didn’t have any qualms - but this is an example of the general principle. Engineering ethics is filled with examples of where an engineer has done the right thing. Scientists providing advice need to realise they are working in the same place.
If the same standards that apply to engineering were applied to your example then, yes, you would have grounds to sue.
Using your example as a hypothetical to illustrate how engineering standards would apply to science, assume that two weather forecasts are made:
a. “It will be cloudy on Wednesday”.
b. “There is a low pressure cell of 1000Hpa centred about 100 miles to the west of Smallville, and is moving due east at a rate of twenty miles per hour. The associated relative humidity is 85%.
These conditions have been observed 100 times in the past 20 years, and in 70% of the cases it has produced cloudy skies over Smallville for the subsequent 48hours. In the remaining 30% of the cases, the wind shifted to the south and produced light rain, with the greatest fall of rain being 0.5 inches occurring when the wind shifted to a south easterly bearing.
In light of these observations we predict that over Smallvillle, over the 48 hours from noon today there is a 70% probability of cloudy but dry conditions, with a 30% probability of rain.”
If given forecast “a”, it rained, you would have grounds to sue. Alternatively, given forecast “b”, you would not.
The difference is that in forecast “b”, the objective basis for the forecast is given and both the hazards and the risks are quantified. Both the science and the uncertainties are objectively presented.
This relates to science in general in that in many cases scientists tend to over sell their knowledge and underplay the uncertainties; ie: the tendency is to give forecast “a”.
Consequently, when their predictions turn out to be wrong or misinterpreted, there is a well justified outrage on the part of those affected. It seems that this was the case with the Italian scientists, and this seems to be the reason they were held to account.
This outrage could be reduced somewhat if scientists were obliged to conform to standards similar to those that apply to engineering.
[small request and small rant about typeface to Francis Vaughan]
Could you hit a return to add a line between grafs? I find the stupid Arial sans serif hard to read for extended text, like all stupid san serifs.
[/small request and small rant about typeface]
Agreed - I didn’t realise what I had done until it was too late to edit it. It urks me just as much you.
Just to add these data points to the discussion, the prosecutor did say “I’m not crazy. I know they cannot predict earthquakes.”
Judge : the defendants " gave inexact , incomplete, and contradictory information."
Article : " The crux of the trial was not earthquake prediction, but risk communication."
Some people seem to have the wrong idea, that the scientists were faulted for not correctly predicting the earthquake. It seems more like they are in trouble for not clearly communicating the risk. I’m not say that they did or didn’t, or whether it was even their job, just that that’s what it was about. I realize most of you know this already.
http://www.cbc.ca/m/rich/technology/story/2012/10/23/f-earthquake-prediction-italy.html
I sure hope the scientific community, or SOMEbody, is putting together a fund for these scientists, so they and their families don’t become destitute.
Trying to hold these guys responsible is ridiculous.
Let me put it another way–if the world were 90% geologists, nobody would think to prosecute these guys. The prevailing thought would be “yeah, earthquakes, they’re hard to predict”.
This is really not much different than a good old-fashioned witch hunt.
I don’t care what they said in the news conference…I learned in college geology how difficult earthquake prediction is, and that’s that. It’s not these scientists’ fault that the general population is geologically ignorant.
Earthquake prediction is not engineering. Earthquake prediction is more like predicting the weather, except way less accurate. That’s just how it is, currently, and how it will probably be for at least another 20 years or more.
Modelling earthquake behavior accurately would require much faster computers than we have now, as well as a much better understanding of geology.
How is this even a debated issue? What is wrong with Italy?
There are two questions here.
Should the Italian guys be in prison - I doubt anyone thinks so. It is an absurd overreaction.
Are these guys totally blameless? I don’t think they are. They were naive, and got railroaded into appearing in a politically motivated calming of the populace. As I wrote earlier, there is almost nothing useful that could have been done even if they were able to say for certain that an earthquake was due. Maybe the city would have shut down a few old buildings and tourist attractions - but you can bet there would have been vocal opposition to this from those who derived income. But the scientists should not have been involved, and in a better world should have known enough not to go along with proceedings. This particular time it really made no difference. But the general principle remains. Scientists worldwide need to be clear about when they are acting within their expertise - which is usually scientific research, and when they are providing a professional opinion - which for many of them takes them into a whole new world they don’t usually understand.
The Italian reaction to the actions of these scientists and public servants (notice how most of them were directors and heads of sections, not working at the coalface scientists) is a drastic overreaction. Contrast it to the total denial and underplaying of responsibility and culpability in the Fukushima reactor disaster.
Interesting point. And of course the attempt at the non-existence of Chernobyl.
The similarity of Arezzo, Fukushima, and Chernobyl, is revealed in how they differ: they differ in in the sense that easily identifiable cultural tendencies are implicated in each: individual responsibility and (one hopes, in general) litigious culpability, group responsibility eventually leading to always-desired cohesion, or simalcrum of no culpability, and totalitarian factual non-culpability.
Over-design may be a necessity in engineering, but is a luxury. That’s all I can think of now; but I don’t think the issue devolves into the analogy that easily.
Reporter’s jargon is all we have. What’s the crime and what type; dolo or culpa? Negligence can be as bad as malicious intent. So if it’s negligence, let’s have it. Were they remiss? Did they not perform due diligence? Was it a case of lack of skill?
If, as has been claimed, earthquakes are unpredictable, the scientists were negligent in providing a prediction that there wouldn’t be an earthquake, and liable for the deaths that occurred.
Of course, neither of those statements is entirely true. Under some circumstances, some seismic activity can be predicted, and the scientists did in fact give a probabilistic prediction, not an absolute one. What is clear is that the government officials gave an absolute forecast, which people believed, and died because they believed it. The scientists didn’t, to my knowledge, attempt to correct that prediction, and may have been negligent to do so.
My opinion, for what it’s worth, is that the official who gave the false prediction was criminally negligent, and the scientists are morally culpable to some degree.
My WAG is an infraction regarding official procedures and channels of communication. I mean, my country is third world but dang, our volcanologists, seismologist and weather forecasters know how to qualifiy and release their reports.
Now imagine that they had given a general warning and told people that a severe earthquake might be coming, that it might have magnitude 7 (say) and it might be dangerous to stay in your homes and the authorities decided to evacuate with all the resultant disruption and maybe even people dying in traffic accidents. And now imagine the quake never came. They could well have been prosecuted for that. If I were a seismologist, I might be searching for a safer profession (politician?).
You know, in the challenger disaster, the scientists were worried, but the administrators over-ruled them. Had the administrators been prosecuted, I would have approved.
This doesn’t comfort me. (Not that I’m in danger of prosecution from the italian justice system.) If the case is that they miscommunicated the risk, then I want to see what the procedure was for communicating risk and where the scientists’ response failed to follow SOP. If they can demonstrate that there was a willful disregard for established practices then bad scientists! Sit in the pokey. If there was no process or a confusing or contradictory process then figure out who was in charge of that and grill them. But as it stands, it sounds to me like the government’s playing “I’m thinking of a number between 1 and 1000, you’ve got one guess, go!”
It wasn’t the scientist that were worried about the launch, Hari–the engineers who recommended cancelling the launch were overruled by their managers, who were under enormous pressure by NASA to proceed. One big Charlie-Foxtrot of hubris, miscommunication, and increasingly habitual ignorance of the risks involved. The L’Aquila quake seems to be another variation of this routine. Except in this case, more serious politics were involved, and people got played (and lot more died).
You might be thinking of Richard Feynman who wrote the famous appendix F to the Roger’s report on the Challenger Disaster. But that was after the fact.
As for the Italians, I would argue that cooler heads will prevail in the appeals court and throw out the convictions. My thinking is along these lines: no Italian seismologist will voice an opinion again unless they know they have immunity from prosecution. And, if another earthquake hits, people are going to quickly realize that they need seismologist more than they don’t and demand the government give the scientist immunity.
I could think of two areas that would be impacted immediately should the convictions be upheld. Finding people and and the reallocation of funding for other, less litigious forms of research Who wants to add a prison term to his CV?
Incidentally , Grateful-UnDead, could you give any specific examples how scientist are “politicizing” science? I would argue that if anything, scientist are being subjected to politicization on account their conclusions are politically unpopular (e. g., global warming, creationism, anti-vaxers, etc.).
Let me remind you what happens when you start going after scientist for advocating ideas that are considered controversial.
It seems to me this is a case of scapegoating. This is a known seismic zone. Why weren’t the buildings constructed accordingly? The people and their leaders don’t want to take the blame for a lack of foresight so they blame the scientists for a lack of forewarning.
Scientist (Monday): There’s a 50% chance of a major earthquake in the next 30 days.
Events (Tuesday): Major earthquake happens
Court (Wednesday): Scientist, guilty. He only forecast 50% and should have said 100%. Put his ass in jail!