Earthquake Scientists Sentenced to 6 Years

[Oberon]

By this definition, our Michael Fish, the weather forecaster who denied that there would be a hurricane (although technically he was right, it wasn't a hurricane and he DID say it would be very windy) just before the 1987 storm which killed 22 people should have been jailed.

Your comparison to your fathers job watching a gauge is inaccurate, because if the dial moves too far, then he calls in the other guys and they make the assessment to evacuate the mine or not (Presumably) but as any geologist or vulcanologist that works in the public eye will tell you, they face a catch-22 situation whenever a scenario presents itself where there is a possibility that an earthquake may occur or a volcano may erupt, because there is a 50/50 chance of it happening. Now, if they sound the alarm, the area is evacuated, businesses close, the economy is effected and people have to leave belongings behind. Now, if the earthquake happens or the volcano erupts then all well and good, people have been saved, the geologists and vulcanologists are hailed as heroes and the rebuilding begins...but if nothing happens, then the geologists and vulcanologists are accused of scaremongering, and no-one listens to them.
Sometimes they can come under a lot of pressure from government officials NOT to declare a situation because of the effect it would have on the economy and the chance that it might not come to pass.
A swarm of earthquakes in an area can be an indication of a future major earthquake, or it can just be a fault line letting off steam, there is no way to tell until it happens.
Even Japan, which has the best earthquake detection system in the world, with over a thousand seismographs employed, could only give a minutes warning before the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and subsequent tsunami. Scientists in Japan had predicted that the 'Big One' which they anticipated would occur at some point in the future, would occur further south towards Tokyo but they couldn't be sure where it would happen until it happened.

Earthquakes and volcanoes are very hard to predict accurately, although volcanoes are a bit easier than earthquakes as they show more visible signs of an eruption than earthquakes do, but we are getting better at earthquake prediction than we were even twenty years ago, but it's still not an exact science, and for Italy to jail these men for making a bad call is absolute nonsense and I don't blame the head of the Italian disaster organisation for resigning in protest, it's going to set a dangerous precedent when Italian seismologists will be more concerned with their public appearance than potentially getting a warning out, if anything it's going to make them more reluctant to commit to a yes or no, and put the Italian people at more risk.

[Kptlt. Neuerburg]

What a bum rap for those guys. I used to live in Washington State which has both seismic and volcanic activity it is much easyer to predict the latter as like Oberon said volcanos do tend to give warning signs before an eruption. As for earthquakes its is far more difficult to predict when a "big one" will happen. There have been many predictions as to when the next big quake will happen, sometimes these predictions are correct but more often then not they're wrong. The major trouble with predicting any sort of major earthquakes is that by the time a warning is given the quake would have started or have already ended. While I was living in Washington State I had the experiance to have lived through an earthquake which was the 2001 Nesqually quake (magnitude 6.8) and the quake lasted only 45 seconds and there was no warning. It is a great injustice to throw these seismoligests into prison on the basis that they failed to predict what no human nor machine can.

[MothBalls]

They should hang the judge for not predicting that these scientists were going to commit manslaughter.

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by jimbuna

The first reported incident involving The Italian Inquisition?

Well I did not expect that.

[kranz]

Originally Posted by Oberon

but as any geologist or vulcanologist that works in the public eye will tell you, they face a catch-22 situation whenever a scenario presents itself where there is a possibility that an earthquake may occur or a volcano may erupt, because there is a 50/50 chance of it happening.

I know that we lack details of the trial, but: are you saying that this Committee, and its members, knowing that there is only a 50% chance to foretell (I deliberately used this word, I hope it has this mystic connotation)
whether an earthquake is like or unlikely, claimed that the earthquake is unlikely and people should "relax"?
For me, 50% is not much, so to say. I mean, with a 50% chance of trembles causing an earthquake we wouldn't need "top experts" to do that, right?

Originally Posted by Oberon

...but if nothing happens, then the geologists and vulcanologists are accused of scaremongering, and no-one listens to them.

Any examples?

Originally Posted by Oberon

Sometimes they can come under a lot of pressure from government officials NOT to declare a situation because of the effect it would have on the economy and the chance that it might not come to pass.

if they were members of an official committee, that is a poor excuse tbh. They should have done their job above all the (alleged) pressure. If they failed to that pressure, that's their fault.

Originally Posted by Oberon

Earthquakes and volcanoes are very hard to predict accurately,

does it mean that people should take completely no responsibility for their decisions while dealing with seismology?

@catfish

You cannot predict an earthquake

so which set of answers is correct when someone is given a seismic data and asked "will there be an earthquake?"
1.
a/yes
b/no
c/i don't know
2.
a/i don;t know

Bcoz what you are saying, guys is like that the committee knew that they cannot predict the earthquake but still they said: hell no, relax and drink your wine, with a 150% certainty (as i said before we miss 100% of the trial's details, tho)

[kranz]

Originally Posted by Kptlt. Hellmut Neuerburg

It is a great injustice to throw these seismoligests into prison on the basis that they failed to predict what no human nor machine can.

yup, it's a great injustice that someone has to face the consequences of his bad decisions. If it's like you are saying, why did they ever create such a council of experts and why the heck did those experts join it, if they knew there is nothing you can do to predict it?

[Catfish]

Seismic experts (usually specialised geologists or geophysicists) exist and have an institute to study and observe the thin earth crust's seismic action, tectonics etc., so that maybe one day someone might be able to predict such things as earthquakes. This is basic research, and always underfunded.
(Seismic analysis also encompasses sending seismic waves via explosions or vibrations through the crustand, and record the reflections, to determine layers and oil/gas traps and the like.)

Kranz, you asked:
"so which set of answers is correct when someone is given a seismic data and asked "will there be an earthquake?"
1.
a/yes
b/no
c/i don't know
2.
a/i don;t know"

Any honest answer would be 1.c: "don't know", or 2.: "don't know"
A counter question would be "are you willing to move and settle some hundred kilometers away?" If the answer is negative, you would probably suggest to relax take a glass of vine. Because, frankly, it can happen any time.

The problem ist that the tectonic plates or volcanic activity does not really announce itself, but through pressure and tension within the stone masses - and this tension can divert from virtually nothing to millions of tons within a few meters - you cannot plug enough sonds into the ground to rally measure that, let alone control it.

The pressure slowly rises by continental drift or micro-plate shifting, until the weakest point somewhere gives in, so it is not a continuous movement, but a building up of very high pressure, until it suddenly "relaxes" via what we call an earthquake, but really happens some hundred meters or kilometers below the surface and often hundreds of kilometers away. There is no exact 'point' where it happens also, but usually a whole fraction front of a length of kilometers.

We can measure a few points, but given that one 4000 meter drillling project costs 500 million dollars at least, such research simply cannot be financed under 'capitalistic circumstances' - some hundred sonds of that kind would maybe save a life, but will never earn money and finance itself, in any way.
No government which spends a trillion bucks a year for new war planes, can also finance such basic research. [/cyn]

Thanks and greetings,
Catfish

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by kranz

I know that we lack details of the trial, but: are you saying that this Committee, and its members, knowing that there is only a 50% chance to foretell (I deliberately used this word, I hope it has this mystic connotation)whether an earthquake is like or unlikely, claimed that the earthquake is unlikely and people should "relax"?
For me, 50% is not much, so to say. I mean, with a 50% chance of trembles causing an earthquake we wouldn't need "top experts" to do that, right?

The trouble is, Kranz, if they were to say anything other than it is unlikely then it would cause people to leave the area, and they were likely under a lot of pressure to be 'absolutely 100% sure' before saying that there WOULD be an earthquake because of the cost of lost revenue of people leaving the area, and lost taxes.
50% is pretty much spot on, it either would happen, or it would not happen. You simply cannot be any more accurate than that. Seismologists have been predicting an earthquake that will devastate the San Francisco area for the last twenty to thirty years, they call it 'The Big One' on the San Andreas fault, but they can't tell you when it will happen, it could happen tomorrow, it could happen in a hundred years time. Like I said in my previous post, even the Japanese, who have the best earthquake monitoring system in the world can only give a minutes warning of an earthquake, maximum, often it's less.

Any examples?

Sure.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal.../392743a0.html

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=n...=0CB0Q6AEwADgU

In 1976 Dr. Brian Brady, a physicist then at the U.S. Bureau of Mines, where he had studied how rocks fracture, "concluded a series of four articles on the theory of earthquakes with the deduction that strain building in the subduction zone [off-shore of Peru] might result in an earthquake of large magnitude within a period of seven to fourteen years from mid November 1974." In an internal memo written in June 1978 he narrowed the time window to "October to November, 1981", with a main shock in the range of 9.2±0.2. In a 1980 memo he was reported as specifying "mid-September 1980". This was discussed at a scientific seminar in San Juan, Argentina, in October 1980, where Brady's colleague, Dr. W. Spence, presented a paper. Brady and Spence then met with government officials from the U.S. and Peru on 29 October, and "forecast a series of large magnitude earthquakes in the second half of 1981." This prediction became widely known in Peru, following what the U.S. embassy described as "sensational first page headlines carried in most Lima dailies" on January 26, 1981.
On 27 January 1981, after reviewing the Brady-Spence prediction, the U.S. National Earthquake Prediction Evaluation Council (NEPEC) announced it was "unconvinced of the scientific validity" of the prediction, and had been "shown nothing in the observed seismicity data, or in the theory insofar as presented, that lends substance to the predicted times, locations, and magnitudes of the earthquakes." It went on to say that while there was a probability of major earthquakes at the predicted times, that probability was low, and recommend that "the prediction not be given serious consideration."
Unfazed, Brady subsequently revised his forecast, stating there would be at least three earthquakes on or about July 6, August 18 and September 24, 1981, leading one USGS official to complain: "If he is allowed to continue to play this game ... he will eventually get a hit and his theories will be considered valid by many."
On June 28 (the date most widely taken as the date of the first predicted earthquake), it was reported that: "the population of Lima passed a quiet Sunday".The headline on one Peruvian newspaper: "NO PASO NADA" ("Nothing happens").
In July Brady formally withdrew his prediction on the grounds that prerequisite seismic activity had not occurred. Economic losses due to reduced tourism during this episode has been roughly estimated at one hundred million dollars (emphasis mine)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...lse-alarm.html

It is a case of the boy who cried wolf, I'm sure you've heard of that particular fable, if you take every single minor earthquake as being the foreshock of a major earthquake then eventually no-one will listen to you, which will cause problems if and when it does actually happen.
After all, only five to ten percent of all small earthquakes turn out to be foreshocks of a major earthquake, so even a cluster of small earthquakes in an area is not a reliable fore-warning of a major event.

if they were members of an official committee, that is a poor excuse tbh. They should have done their job above all the (alleged) pressure. If they failed to that pressure, that's their fault.

If you were in their shoes, without the benefit of hindsight, knowing that you could lose your job for a 5-10% chance of being right, would you gamble it? Would you want to be tarred as the 'Chicken Little' constantly warning after every small earthquake that the sky was about to fall in?
Honestly I don't know what kind of pressure they were under, I don't know how the Italian seismologist system interacts with the government. However it is likely that the seismologists are paid by the government, and thus if they issue a series of false alarms which cause financial problems for the government, and thus show themselves as unreliable, then they would likely have their funding cut. That is subjective though, as you said about the data from the trial itself, there's not enough data to be sure.

does it mean that people should take completely no responsibility for their decisions while dealing with seismology?

I think that seismologists should stop being asked if an earthquake is going to happen, because all they can do is highlight an area that has a likely risk, they can give a time-line but even then it's subjective. Honestly you might as well also turn around and blame the people who died for living in an area which has earthquakes in it. Does this mean that people who get killed by earthquakes should take responsibility for living in an area which have earthquakes in it?

[Oberon]

Epic necromancy!



Ok, ok, calm down...there's a reason for it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-29996872

The seismologists have finally had their convictions overturned. The prosecution can apply to a higher court to have the conviction reinstated, but hopefully the higher court will laugh so much that it won't actually get anywhere.

What a farce, thank goodness that it's now hopefully over.

[Catfish]

Well that was overdue.

Anyway, it seems it was all done to divert from Berlusconi who had cut the fundings for said institute.. and who needed a scapegoat for the public uproar. But, as i said before, with all the fundings in the world, no one can really and exactly predict earthquakes.

See, it is not always a conspiracy theory, though politicians and certain 'services' love to play that card. You can easily find a solution by asking yourself, who has advantages from a situation, and who will it serve most.
See: "Russian" submarines in swedish waters...

[Jimbuna]

Anything with Berlusconi involvement is well believable.