On 3 June 2010, the Attorney L'Aquila sent the notices of manslaughter to the President of the National Institute for Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) Enzo Boschi, the director of the National Center Earthquakes Giulio Selvaggi (the principal deputy to the monitoring center in Italy earthquakes), professors of geophysics Franco Barberi of Rome University and Claudio Eva, University of Genoa, the members of the Commission Major Hazards and leaders of the Civil Protection Department, including Bernardo De Bernardinis.
The base charge is that it was not promulgated a state of alert after the meeting in L'Aquila six days before the earthquake of 6.3 magnitude that struck the same city and surrounding areas, killing 308 people, leaving 1600 others injured and more than 65,000 homeless.
A group of citizens said that after the shock of grade 4.0 on the Richter scale on March 30 warned, many had expressed their intention to leaving home, but following the assurances issued by the Commission Major Hazards-a group of experts that advises the Civil Defence on what to do in case of natural disaster-that had gathered on March 31, had changed his mind. In August 2009 the citizens of L'Aquila requested a formal investigation the public prosecutor on the case, which led to the notices of June 3.
The news of the charge of culpable homicide (manslaughter) scientists appeared on the front page of scientific journals, including "Nature" (http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100622/full/465992a . html).
the accused has shocked scientists around the world who have rallied to provide their support and solidarity to the Italian seismologists signing an open letter to President Napolitano (the letter and list of more than 5000 signatures are here: http://www.mi.ingv.it/open_letter).
The situation is complicated by the fact that in the weeks before the earthquake of 6 April 2009 were actually spread alarm about the imminence of a major earthquake in that Joachim Giuliani, a laboratory technician convinced to be able to predict earthquakes based on emission of radon from the soil. But Giuliani's theories have never been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, nor are they accepted by the relevant scientific community, the international seismologists, who agree instead that there is no reliable and validated method to predict earthquakes (as they write in their open letter) and that the only measures that can be taken are preventive ones.
If we were in a system of "common law" (as the U.S. or the UK) instead of "Civil Law" like ours, Richard Giuliani could be called to court to make the scientific expert ("expert witness" ). Probably not but its scientific evidence would be admissible in court because it lacks at least two of the four criteria that define a scientific evidence admissible under the Daubert Standard: publication in a scientific journal (where the data is then available to review and fasificabilità by the scientific community) and the acceptance by the relevant scientific community (for instance, that of seismologists, and not that of the card readers or crystal balls to predict the future).
On the other hand, in cases like this where science-in other similar cases, medicine-does not meet the expectations and demands, pseudo-scientific arguments are fertile and easy to hold on people.
Since there is no reliable and validated method to predict a natural disaster, the task of the policy would be to implement all possible measures to prevent a disaster is not predictable. For example: to be united in explaining that the best way to protect the population is not easy and not through an alarm system, but by investing in preventive measures: construction of earthquake resistant houses, zoning which does not allow the construction of houses in high risk areas (or on the slopes of volcanoes), modifications to existing homes , sewage systems, effective and tested with evidence on the population, etc..
Remember that an earthquake of the same scale as that Aquila could cause a much greater number of 308 deaths in underdeveloped countries or developing countries of South-East Asia, for example, while it might not cause virtually no deaths in other countries high seismic risk such as Japan, but more prepared in terms of budget to deal with such disasters.
But, if the policy fails in the tasks required of it, as happened in Italy, you can always find a scapegoat to channel the anger and despair of their own citizens from elsewhere, and encourage them to "burn the scientists", as Ben Goldacre in his post on June 18 (http://www.badscience.net/2010/06/burn-the-scientists/ # more-1699).
What would then the rule of law for a system like ours of "Civil law"?
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