Italian scientists convicted over L'Aquila earthquake

[Flagg]

Italy: A joke of a "justice" system since Gallileo. I mean I know I'm an American and I probably shouldn't talk about them, but ever since the farce of a trial against Knox...

[Guardsman Bass]

It's going to appeals, where it will hopefully get flipped. The fact that they were actually convicted by any court over this, though, is risky. It's going to make scientists much more reluctant to consult with the authorities in question the next time that seismic activity starts picking up.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Wow, how the fuck did it take an entire year to conduct this sham of a trial and sentence them?

[Alyrium Denryle]

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OK. So much for my going to bask in the glory of Florence at some point, because I have to boycott italy now.

So what was up with Italian building codes?

This looks to me like a corrupt bureaucracy trying to cover its ass by finding a scapegoat. Who better than wiseguy scientists who are somehow not omniscient?

Italy is really god damn earthquake and volcano prone. In terms of risk assessment, they should be doing more across the board to mitigate earthquake risk such as teaching people what to do in the event of an earthquake. Predicting large quakes is simply not possible, but if a 6.9 quake can kill hundreds of people, the italian state failed, not the scientists.

Part of this is that a lot of the architecture is medieval. There are no building codes that apply to those buildings. Virtually all of central Florence, Venice, and dear god San Gimignano consists of medieval and renaissance architecture. If you expect that they may have expanded beyond their original footprints... to a degree yes. However, some of them got hit so hard by the Plague that they have never actually recovered their populations, so compared to other western cities... they have not expanded much. In modern cities--in fact, even hand-built homes in rural Alaska--the damage is not nearly that bad. I have lived through 6-7 point quakes in Alaska in a house built of wood on a god damn hillside and the only city where you might see that sort of death toll is Anchorage--due to liquifaction of the mud-flat the city is built on.

On that note, even if the defendants had said "their will be an earthquake", when? Are they supposed to predict it down to the day now so that the cities can be evacuated? Is that the standard that the courts have ruled seismology must reach in order to not be criminally liable? What about Volcanology? What happens now if the Vesuvias observatory does not get sufficient warning from the volcano that it is about to explode? Will they be charged with crimes against humanity if the entire population of the bay of naples cannot be evacuated?

What about the supervolcano that Vesuvias is a minor vent of? What happens if it goes and there is not the months of warning required to evacuate southern europe? Will (what is left of) the italian government (in "exile") hold the volcanologists responsible?

That is the precedent this sets. Holding geologists criminally liable for the uncertainty inherrent in nature and for the limitations of the society in which they live.

[Borgholio]

Keep in mind this is the same culture that took 400 years to say anything really positive about Galileo, and still TO THIS DAY refuses to put a statue of the man up anywhere on Vatican property.

[Siege]

Minor correction: plans for the Galileo statue in the Vatican gardens were scrapped (with no explanation given), but there is a 24-inch-tall statue of Galileo in the library of the Pontifical Council for Culture.

[Borgholio]

Ah yes, a 24 inch statue makes it all ok...

[EnterpriseSovereign]

OFF TOPIC- can the other thread about this be merged into this one?

What I don't get is, by medieval architecture, do you mean most of the buildings date back that far, or just their designs? Because if Italy is that prone to earthquakes, how can structures that date back centuries have survived this long? Or is 6.9 a large earthquake by Italian standards?

[Alyrium Denryle]

OFF TOPIC- can the other thread about this be merged into this one?

What I don't get is, by medieval architecture, do you mean most of the buildings date back that far, or just their designs? Because if Italy is that prone to earthquakes, how can structures that date back centuries have survived this long? Or is 6.9 a large earthquake by Italian standards?

As in, the buildings date back that long. The reason many have survived is that many of the iconic ones are just really well built and get repaired when they get hit with earthquake damage. They are a part of the area's history, and for all of Italy's faults, the country does care a great deal about that history. But smaller buildings? The houses and such that line the streets? They dont hold up so well.

But take a look at the big faultlines:



A 6.9 is a big quake by any standard.

[Dalton]

The topics have been merged.

[Irbis]

So what was up with Italian building codes?

They can be good, locally. Doesn't help when mafia bribes/blackmails controllers into accepting substandard shit instead of good materials that are sold on black market instead.

Keep in mind this is the same culture that took 400 years to say anything really positive about Galileo, and still TO THIS DAY refuses to put a statue of the man up anywhere on Vatican property.

This is also culture that at the time produced Da Vinci, Galileo, Giordano Bruno, Pigafetta among others despite parts of it being pants on retarded. Your point being?

Ah yes, a 24 inch statue makes it all ok...

Do you even know how big Vatican is?

Normal sized statue would either demolish composition of Renaissance architecture, or take 1/4 of free space there. Yes, Vatican is that small.

What I don't get is, by medieval architecture, do you mean most of the buildings date back that far, or just their designs? Because if Italy is that prone to earthquakes, how can structures that date back centuries have survived this long? Or is 6.9 a large earthquake by Italian standards?

Um, have you even seen how typical, old Italian city looks?

"Centuries" doesn't even begin to give it justice, Italy still has a lot of buildings, aqueducts, bridges, working ones at that dating to Roman times. That is, before Common Era. You can literally pick any of great Italians of the past, go to their city and walk at least one corridor/room they also did.

But then again, they didn't have mafia back then

[Alyrium Denryle]

Um, have you even seen how typical, old Italian city looks?

"Centuries" doesn't even begin to give it justice, Italy still has a lot of buildings, aqueducts, bridges, working ones at that dating to Roman times. That is, before Common Era. You can literally pick any of great Italians of the past, go to their city and walk at least one corridor/room they also did.

Oh. Oh do I have examples

Florence



Venice



San Gimignano



Lets put it this way: The game assassins creed 2 used very accurate maps for at least some sections of Venice and Florence, because it fucking could. Because those parts of the city are still around, almost exactly as they were in the 15th century.

[fgalkin]

OFF TOPIC- can the other thread about this be merged into this one?

What I don't get is, by medieval architecture, do you mean most of the buildings date back that far, or just their designs? Because if Italy is that prone to earthquakes, how can structures that date back centuries have survived this long? Or is 6.9 a large earthquake by Italian standards?

The Haitian earthquake that leveled most of the country and killed some 300k people was "only" 7.0. An earthquake of that magnitude is nothing to scoff at, especially if your buildings are not earthquake-proof.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[DarkArk]

The Haitian earthquake that leveled most of the country and killed some 300k people was "only" 7.0

Contrast that with the 2001 Nisqually quake, which was a 6.8, and killed no one. The only reported fatality was from a heart attack. Building standards really do make all the difference when it comes with earthquakes.

The game assassins creed 2 used very accurate maps for at least some sections of Venice and Florence, because it fucking could. Because those parts of the city are still around, almost exactly as they were in the 15th century.

Is it bad if I instantly recognized all those landmarks specifically because of AC2?

[Alyrium Denryle]

Is it bad if I instantly recognized all those landmarks specifically because of AC2?

Yes.

[fgalkin]

The Haitian earthquake that leveled most of the country and killed some 300k people was "only" 7.0

Contrast that with the 2001 Nisqually quake, which was a 6.8, and killed no one. The only reported fatality was from a heart attack. Building standards really do make all the difference when it comes with earthquakes.

Uh...thanks for repeating my point. I guess.

The game assassins creed 2 used very accurate maps for at least some sections of Venice and Florence, because it fucking could. Because those parts of the city are still around, almost exactly as they were in the 15th century.

Is it bad if I instantly recognized all those landmarks specifically because of AC2?

Yes.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[DPDarkPrimus]

Wow, how the fuck did it take an entire year to conduct this sham of a trial and sentence them?

Italy does not have the right to a speedy trial, and in fact they are notorious for theirs being extremely prolonged.

[Blayne]

Is it bad if I instantly recognized all those landmarks specifically because of AC2?

I would argue a big "No" because Tangential Learning is a integral part of video games. I got interested in Roman history originally thanks to Caesar III; and Napoleonic military history from "Cossacks" and so on.

[Keevan_Colton]

BBC

The head of Italy's disaster body, Luciano Maiani, has resigned to protest against prison sentences passed on seven colleagues over the 2009 earthquake in L'Aquila.

Six scientists and an ex-official were convicted of multiple manslaughter for giving a falsely reassuring statement.

Prof Maiani, a physicist, said the Serious Risks Commission could not work "in such difficult conditions".

The 6.3 magnitude quake killed 309 people and left the city in ruins.

Prof Maiani's decision to quit was announced by the Italy's Civil Protection department, which said the commission's vice-president, Mauro Rosi, and emeritus president Giuseppe Zamberletti had also tendered their resignations.

"The situation created by yesterday's sentence... is incompatible with running the commission's work in a calm and efficient manner and with its role of giving high level advice to the organs of the state," Mr Maiani said in a statement on the department's website.

"These are professionals who spoke in good faith and were by no means motivated by personal interests, they had always said that it is not possible to predict an earthquake," he told the Corriere della Sera newspaper.

"This is the end of scientists giving consultations to the state," warned Prof Maiani, a world-renowned physicist who was director general of the Cern nuclear research centre in Switzerland from 1999-2003.

'Perverse and ludicrous'
The group, all members of the National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Serious Risks, were accused of having provided "inaccurate, incomplete and contradictory" information about the danger of the tremors felt ahead of the 6 April 2009 quake.

At a meeting a few days before the deadly quake, they had told officials in L'Aquila that, while a major earthquake was not impossible, it was not likely.

On the night of the quake, many people are said to have remained in their homes and died because of the advice, while others who had decided to remain outside in the street survived.

In their closing statements at the trial in L'Aquila on Monday, prosecutors quoted a witness whose father died.

Guido Fioravanti called his mother straight after the first tremor. "I remember the fear in her voice. On other occasions they would have fled but that night, with my father, they repeated to themselves what the risk commission had said. And they stayed."

However, the six-year jail sentences have shocked the scientific community.

The prestigious science journal, Nature, said "the verdict is perverse and the sentence ludicrous". It called for protests against the sentence's severity and at scientists being criminalised "for the way their opinions were communicated".

Leading political figures in Italy suggested that the case had blurred the lines between science and public life.

"The risk is that doubt will no longer be allowed to form part of scientific judgement," Interior Minister Anna Maria Cancellieri said. "The role of science is not the same as politics or administration."

The speaker of the lower house of the Italian parliament, Gianfranco Fini, was more blunt in his assessment of the verdict: "I trust it will be corrected on first appeal."

Among those convicted are some of Italy's most prominent and internationally respected seismologists and geological experts.

Their defence had called for their acquittal, arguing that it was impossible to predict an earthquake. More than 5,000 scientists said the same thing when they wrote an open letter to Italian President Giorgio Napolitano in support of the men in 2010.

Reacting to the verdict against him, Bernardo De Bernardinis, former vice-president of the Civil Protection Agency's technical department, said: "I believe myself to be innocent before God and men."

While the seven men involved are appealing against their convictions - and remain free while they do so - all are facing the prospect of being barred from ever holding public office again.

So, how long before there's no one working there?