generalspeaking

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

6.3 Magnitude Tremblor

"I am dejected, desperate. I thought I would have been acquitted. I still don't understand what I was convicted of."
Enzo Boschi, former head of the Italian National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology

Guilty of? Why of representing expert knowledge and authority on the science of plate tectonics yet representing at the very same time, non-results-compliant science. Studying the Earth's crust and its lack of stability in the movement of those unstable plates should qualify the expert in such matters as being a master at predictability. Even if nature herself is unpredictable.

The layman expects no less than that of the scientist. The scientist knows better because of his expertise in studying nature, science and the arcane connection between the two; one and the same. The layman knows nothing in his ignorance other than the expectations he layers upon the knowledge garnered by those whose understanding of the mechanics of plate movement surpasses his own.

So although the scientific community takes it as fundamental to their understanding of nature's caprices that nothing can be taken for granted, nothing can be assumed, and nothing can be stated with certainty and thus promulgated as warning of events that may never occur, justice screams out for someone to blame. And justice has insisted that those who 'know' must be held to account.

Which was the impetus for an Italian court to convict seven scientists and experts - of manslaughter. They had failed to warn residents in L'Aquila pre-tremblor when over 300 people were killed as a result of a 6.3 magnitude earthquake that occurred in 2009. All members of the national Great Risks Commission, several prominent in science as geological and disaster experts, convicted.

They took the great risk of implying that their collective knowledge might arm authorities against natural catastrophe by agreeing to sit on that Great Risks Commission, little knowing what standards they would be held to. Impossible standards, as it happens, illogical, with no basis in that particular science itself. But, such is life.

Scientists were themselves well aware that the very purpose of such a trial represented a ridiculous side-show of politicians and jurists appearing to be accountable before the people. And in so doing, holding the scientific experts accountable to politics and to justice. "With earthquakes we just don't know. We just don't know how a swarm will proceed", lamented the deputy editor of Science magazine.

But if seismologists were expected to warn of a quake every time a swarm of seismic activity took place, even though most such swarms never end up causing dangerous earthquakes, the lives of people in the warning area would be disrupted through numerous false alarms, with resulting social panic and displacement. And huge anger and resentment.

"I consider myself innocent before God and men", another of the convicted defendants, Bernardo De Bernardinis, formerly an official of the national Civil Protection Agency swore in his defence. The defendants were accused of giving "inexact, incomplete and contradictory information" relating to the small tremors felt by residents in L'Aquila in weeks and months leading up to the quake.

The prosecutors argued the disaster represented "monumental negligence" on the part of the experts. While the multidisciplinary science society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science condemned the charges, the verdict and the sentencing. As representing a complete misunderstanding of the science behind earthquake probabilities.