Who'd be a scientist eh?

[Thatcherite]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/...world-europe-20025626
Good job Michael Fish wasn't in Italy!

[squarebear]

Ouch! That's a bit harsh

[gness]

As the mother of a furious climate scientist I'm shocked at the verdict. It's a witch hunt of gone by days and won't it make scientists wary of commenting in future? Will we jail doctors who don't predict our illnesses accurately.....teachers if our children get a B instead of an A? The list could be endless.

[naomi24]

Thank you for posting this. I caught a bit of a discussion on Radio 4 earlier this evening, and didn't have a clue what they were talking about.

[sunny-dave]

Astonishing - and utterly depressing ...

[gness]

Depressing.......exactly the word Dave. Science should be taking us forward. How many steps back is this.
Surely there must be such an outcry and protest this verdict will be overturned.
My daughter predicts the changes in healthcare needed to accommodate climate changes. If she dares to now.

[jno]

the charge seems not to have been 'failing to predict an earthquake' but of specifically saying there wouldn't be one, despite months of tremors. The report is very short on factual detail, but if that's correct you'd have to say they didn't do their expert job very well.

[gness]

jno. Some of my daughter's colleagues have links with the scientists involved. We had a long chat earlier about this story but it would take forever for me to explain on here what she told me. We are not being told the whole story yet.....not unusual.

[jno]

I thought the report was rather scanty.

On the face of it, if you bought a house on the basis of an engineer's report that said it was a-ok, and it collapsed because he'd missed something vital, you might well feel he'd failed in his job and owed you a shilling or two (and not just refunding the fee for the report).

[gness]

If that were the whole story.

[EcclesCake]

That is shocking, I just cannot comprehend the judges reasoning for his verdict.

I will poke about into this tomorrow as it is utterly astounding that man can be held accountable for an act of nature. There is a limit to how far seismic activity can be extrapolated and this harsh, astonishingly harsh.

[joggerjayne]

//It's a witch hunt//

Yep, that's the Italian legal system ... a ludicrous circus of medieval hysteria, where the prosecutors pick their victims, and hunt them down ... regardless of the facts.

No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!

[MarkRae]

It boggles the mind...

[Zacs-Master]

I was wondering when you'd pop up JJ. You really don't like the I-ti legal system do you?

[gness]

Hi JJ...."pick their victims" was used in my earlier conversation. Be interesting to see where this goes.

[DTCwordfan]

Zac - forecasting an earthquake though, and finding the scientists guilty, well, that's a bit rich even by Itai standards. Driving the Costa Concordia into the rocks, well that's another - unless that bast gets off.............

[pastafreak]

Lordy...it's like stepping back into the Middle Ages.....frightening,really.

[naomi24]

pastafeak, spot on!

[sunny-dave]

Could they not jail the Pope for not preventing the quake - make about as much sense ...

[pastafreak]

...or Mother Nature...

[Thatcherite]

It also means that they'll have no information of this kind in the future. Who will dare stick their neck out now. Madness!