Six Italian scientists have been sentenced to six years in prison for what a judge said was a faulty forecast of the 2009 earthquake in L'Aquila.
that prosecutors said the scientists, who work for the National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks, "gave a falsely reassuring statement before the quake, while the defense maintained there was no way to predict major quakes."
, what happened is that L'Aquila had been feeling tremors in late March. One local man, who was not a scientist, made the prediction that a big one was on its way. Responding to the man on March 31, the group of scientists concluded it was "improbable" that the area would experience a major earthquake, "although they stopped short of entirely excluding the possibility."
On April 6, a magnitude 6.3 earthquake killed more than 300 poeple.
Andrew Revkin, over at The New York Times' Dot Earth blog, . He called the trial "a medieval-style attack on science."
Revkin said the scientists were forced to provide the assessment after Giampaolo Giuliani, the non-scientist who made the prediction, made the public panic.
Revkin explains that Giampaolo's methods are considered "unreliable, at best." But the commission of scientists was trapped in a yes or no debate.
The bottom line, , is that "there is currently no scientifically accepted method for short-term earthquake prediction."
NBC 暗黑爆料 reports that the prosecution acknowledged that saying the problem here is that the "the risk of a big temblor was not taken seriously enough."
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