The Risks of L'Aquila

On October 22, 2012, Italian judge Marco Billi sentenced six Italian scientists and a government official to six years in prison. The crime? Manslaughter, for statements they made prior to a 5.8 magnitude earthquake in the region of Abruzzo, which resulted in 309 deaths. On March 6, almost five months after the sentencing and just before the March 7 deadline, the scientists have appealed the ruling.
In its responses to the original verdict, Nature magazine has repeatedly touched upon how ludicrous Billi’s ruling is in punishing scientists for poor prediction. And if this were the extent of the scientists’ mistake, I would be inclined to agree. Seismological and earthquake prediction are both notoriously unreliable, and false alarms and near misses are common. Disasters such as Hurricane Katrina rapidly come to mind, and we should ask in these cases: Should the scientists who missed predictions be subject to the same sort of standards the Italian scientists were? The answer, most would agree, is no.
However, the issue at stake here is not whether the scientists made a poor prediction, but whether they adequately communicated the risks pursuant to that prediction. And in this case, the evidence is murkier. As the prosecution alleged during trials, the seven implicated individuals downplayed risks of tremors, falsely reassuring citizens and directly contributing to 29 of the 309 deaths that occurred as a result of the subsequent earthquake. As Billi noted, “the deficient risk analysis was not limited to the omission of a single factor, but to the underestimation of many risk indicators and the correlations between those indicators.”
Even given that the scientists may bear responsibility for poor scientific communication, it is a leap to go as far as Billi does in saying that the scientists provided “an assessment of the risks that was… criminally misguided”. It would be difficult — nay, impossible — to prove that the scientists bore malicious intent when they told the public that the risks of an earthquake were small. Similarly, it would be difficult to prove that the scientists are solely responsible for those 29 of 309 lives lost during the earthquake — that without the scientists’ reassurances, those 29 people would have been in a a safe, open place rather than in frail houses that collapsed around them while they slept.
The ramifications of Billi’s ruling run far beyond this individual case in L’Aquila. By sending the message that it is acceptable to punish scientists for an action that was a result of inefficient communication, the government risks driving away those experts whose opinions are most needed in moments of crisis. Signals of that kind of fear have already manifested themselves after the ruling, with two scientists in the Italian equivalent of FEMA resigning their posts in October after the ruling. It is easy and convenient to point fingers in the wake of a disaster; it is satisfying to ascribe blame to a party for a tragedy that seems senseless. But the way to solve problems and prevent a catastrophe of this scale in the future is not to punish the scientists, but to work with them.
It is for this reason that the scientists’ recent appeal should be considered, and the original verdict reviewed and overturned. With the time and financial resources that went into fighting the legal battle against the scientists, Italy could have instituted programs to improve risk communication for its public officials and could have invested in sturdier infrastructure that better withstands earthquakes. Until real action supplements talk, everyone is a victim of L’Aquila.
Article Photo Credit: Alessandro Giangiulio.
Featured Photo Credit: Wikimedia