Science in the dock

Should you serve a prison sentence for being wrong about something? Monday 22 October marked a worrying time for science; six Italian seismologists and an ex-government official were accused of falsely reassuring the community about the likelihood of an earthquake that killed 309 people in L’Aquila in 2009. Unfortunately, the trial was not laughed out of the courtroom at the first instance and yesterday, the defendants were found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to six years in prison. Science itself appears to have been put on trial.

The defendants, who were members of the Major Risks Committee, met in L’Aquila on March 31 2009, 6 days before the devastating quake. Using all the scientific tools available to them to evaluate the increased seismic activity in the city in the previous months, they concluded that while they could not rule out the possibility of an ensuing earthquake, there was probably no cause for concern. Unfortunately, they were mistaken – the town was struck by a magnitude 6.3 earthquake on April 6, leaving thousands homeless - and as such, they  have been sentenced for inappropriately reassuring the community.

In addition to their sentences, the group have been barred from ever holding public office again and ordered to pay more than nine million euros in damages to survivors in the devastated town.

The absurd verdict was revealed after the prosecutor, Fabio Pucitini, described the scientists’ analyses of the smaller quakes before the disaster as “incomplete, inept, unsuitable and criminally mistaken.”

Pucitini reasoned that without this reassurance, many of the victims would have otherwise evacuated the town at the first signs of a quake and their deaths when the collapse of their homes occurred would otherwise have been prevented.

The defendants are said to be shocked and confused by the sentence. Enzo Bochi, one of the defendants and former head of the country’s institute of Geophysics and Volcanology said after the verdict: "I am dejected, desperate. I thought I would have been acquitted. I still don't understand what I was convicted of."

Let’s consider how easy it is to predict an earthquake. Many seismologists are said to be “stunned” by the verdict because after decades of research, we actually still have no accurate way to predict when and where an earthquake will strike. All experts can do at the moment is track the frequency and size of the earthquakes and use this data to make rough statistical predictions of the possibility of one striking. While the seismologists were not on trial for not predicting the earthquake, but for false reassurance, it still seems terribly unfair to have expected the experts to have produced a complete and certain warning of the natural hazard. In this instance, science does not have the power to say for absolute certain that something will or will not happen.

Far from affecting just the Italian seismologists, the verdict is a terrifying one for the whole scientific community.  Who now will feel confident enough to speak honestly and publicly about their scientific expertise that may impact community decisions? How many scientists will be brave enough to express their scientific opinions knowing that a prison sentence could be the punishment for an incorrect prediction?  Surely an equivalent and inherently unthinkable situation would be to convict the country’s priests for an insufficient warning of an event that can surely be a deemed “an act of God.”  For natural hazard scientists, the verdict is particularly stinging; their work will be scrutinized like never before, and it could be a safer option for these experts to err on the side of caution and overestimate the likelihood of disasters, arguably causing unnecessary panic and resulting in a loss of scientific credibility. But could an overly cautious approach soon too be deemed conviction-worthy?

It is unlikely the defendants will face jail immediately, as in the bizarre intricacies of Italy’s justice system, convictions are not definitive until after at least one level of appeals. Hopefully, an appeal will make the next jury see sense, but let us not forgot that this is the same country that imprisoned Galileo, the father of modern physics, for life in 1610 for suggesting that the Earth revolves around the sun, upsetting the Catholic Church. However, you’d be forgiven for hoping that things might be a little different these days…