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L'Aquila quake: Italy scientists found guilty of manslaughter

bbc.co.uk

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Re: L'Aquila quake: Italy scientists found guilty of manslaughter

#81

Post by mechanical_fish »

ecliptic wrote: post #60
patio11 wrote: post #23

This is crazy, but I'll note that it isn't a peculiarly Italian form of crazy. People rush to find scapegoats after every disaster. In the future, consider being as skeptical of those accusations as you were when people accused folks you identify with, like scientists.

>People rush to find scapegoats after every disaster They have had ample time regain their composure, this happened in 2009.

The tragic fact about scapegoating is that once a community has chosen a scapegoat it is very hard for it to "regain its composure."

Who will be the first to defend the scapegoat? There are big disincentives. You risk being grouped with the scapegoat and suffering the same fate. You risk becoming the new scapegoat. You risk reprisals from the folks who are hiding in shadows while the spotlight follows the scapegoat.

And it probably won't even help. Once a person has chosen an opinion, they tend to defend it, and this applies tenfold to a group. (This plays out in social media every day.) Changing a mob's opinion is hard. Time doesn't necessarily help. There are scapegoats that are centuries old.

The social dynamics favor letting the scapegoat take the fall. That's why scapegoating is so common that we have an ancient name for the practice, even though almost everyone would agree that it's immoral.

Re: L'Aquila quake: Italy scientists found guilty of manslaughter

#82

Post by jbooth »

kevinalexbrown wrote: post #35

This is an extremely important case, in that it underlies a central concern in scientific reporting, and it threatens to change the risks associated with scientific innovation and communication. For instance, if scientists at a pharmaceutical company issue unfounded assurances that a drug is safer than it is in truth, consumers might have a reasonable case. On the other hand, predicting earthquakes is so difficult, e…

With medicine/drugs, there's a financial incentive to call it safe, so there actually does need to be some amount of scrutiny there with risks of enforcement.

With earthquakes, I'd hope that anyone who passed 9th grade science would have laughed this out of court.

Re: L'Aquila quake: Italy scientists found guilty of manslaughter

#84

Post by terraretta »

I, for one, applaud this ruling. There's no reason why scientists should be above the law. It's funny how often they complain of not being taken seriously enough, but then when they are, and something bad happens as a result, they're quick to deny responsibility. Are seismologists serious scientists? If they are, they must accept the consequences. If not, we don't need them. It's as simple as that.

Re: L'Aquila quake: Italy scientists found guilty of manslaughter

#85

Post by cpeterso »

andrewcooke wrote: post #71
objclxt wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a little different. What you're talking about is burying bad news, which is indeed standard political practice. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. What it's not is corruption, which is what the OP is talking about. For what it's worth, I would say Italy does have a perception of being more corrupt than its fellow European counterparts. This may or may not be true - it's obviously a little difficult to o…

chile should be so fucking proud of that map.

Why is Chile such an outlier among South American countries on the Corruption Perceptions Index?

Re: L'Aquila quake: Italy scientists found guilty of manslaughter

#86

Post by trhtrsh »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #81
ecliptic wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People rush to find scapegoats after every disaster They have had ample time regain their composure, this happened in 2009.

The tragic fact about scapegoating is that once a community has chosen a scapegoat it is very hard for it to "regain its composure." Who will be the first to defend the scapegoat? There are big disincentives. You risk being grouped with the scapegoat and suffering the same fate. You risk becoming the new scapegoat. You risk reprisals from the folks who are hiding in shadows while the spotlight follows the scapegoat.…

Everything you say is politically true, but the reason we have judges and juries (in the US anyway, I don't know how Italy works) is that they are in a position to stop the BS.

Re: L'Aquila quake: Italy scientists found guilty of manslaughter

#87

Post by trhtrsh »

objclxt wrote: post #68
rmc wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Italy is an absolutely corrupt shit hole. I remember a scene where they showed recordings of civil protection officials gloating about the disaster on the phone, right after it happened. They talked about the opportunity to make money Just as another data point, lots of countries have corrupt and self-centred politicians. A spin doctor the UK government, on September 11th 2001, between when the towers were hit and wh…

That's a little different. What you're talking about is burying bad news, which is indeed standard political practice. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. What it's not is corruption, which is what the OP is talking about. For what it's worth, I would say Italy does have a perception of being more corrupt than its fellow European counterparts. This may or may not be true - it's obviously a little difficult to o…

Covering up corruption, like Councillor's Expenses, is part of corruption.

Re: L'Aquila quake: Italy scientists found guilty of manslaughter

#88

Post by trhtrsh »

riffraff wrote: post #57
jivatmanx wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all of Italy, only the South. That's why the biggest party in the north is a secessionist party. A lot of cool stuff comes out of the North, like Arduino.

for the record: the last major of milan was, for lack of better word, "impeached" after it was found out her son had built an abusive "batcave". The current governor of lombardia and the whole council is in a corruption and vote marketing scandal. The head of the secessionist party for the last twenty years left his role after it was found out he and his son had been using the party as a revolver bank account. And, n…

Holy cow, the plot of Sin City (Politician's son builds a rape/torture chamber, and the son is protected from punishment because the politician wants him to produce an heir) (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401792/) actually really happened in Milan?

Re: L'Aquila quake: Italy scientists found guilty of manslaughter

#89

Post by napolux »

Well, the sentence is not really about "earthquake prediction", but about the fact that some hours before the big earthquake alarms from the INGV (the italian institute for earthquake monitoring, one of the best in the world) were ignored. Of course nobody can predict earthquakes, but in L'Aquila's quake there were strong evidence of "something happening", and they were ignored: that's why they were found guilty. P.s. I'm from Italy
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