The Italian justice system has been in the news lately–nonstop on some cable stations, it seems. While most of the media attention has been focused on the fate of a Seattle college student’s junior-year-abroad gone terribly wrong, there is another case that is shocking scientific circles around the world. If you haven’t heard, six seismologists in Italy are being criminally prosecuted–charged with manslaughter!–for downplaying the risk of a devastating earthquake in L’Aquila, Italy, in April 2009. Some 300 people died when the town’s buildings–many built contrary to supposedly mandatory building codes–collapsed. Notwithstanding the fact that many of the buildings collapsed because they were improperly built for an earthquake-prone region, the seismologists, according to the prosecution, should have warned L’Aquila’s residents because there were indicators of a major earthquake in the preceding months. (So far, no word on prosecutions of those responsible for fraudulently ignoring building codes, but that’s a different article.)
While the Italian case has raised–appropriately, I believe–the ire of many scientists around the globe for many reasons, including the very real difficulty of predicting with any kind of precision when a major earthquake would actually strike, it also raises the question of when is a government obligated to communicate risks to the public? Is it ever okay to downplay risk? Is fear of creating unnecessary panic, apparently the concern of the Italian seismologists, reason to minimize risk?
