Jail time for not predicting earthquakes? Wow. 1

[JAE]

Link to news article

I just wonder what's next? Jail time for not predicting a crack in a concrete wall?

 

[woodman88]

Ah... Did you read the article?
"...the prosecution assistant told the courtroom that instead, the scientists and officials had inadequately assessed the risk of a quake and given deceptive information to the public."
"...however, Department of Civil Protection official Bernardo De Bernardinis, also a defendant, told citizens there was "no danger.""
Now how bright can they be, saying there is not going to be a dangerous earthquake.

I am not going to state that the concrete I design isn't going to have cracks. If someone does then maybe they should go to jail. Or at least lose their PE's.

Garth Dreger PE - AZ Phoenix area
As EOR's we should take the responsibility to design our structures to support the components we allow in our design per that industry standards.

 

[JAE]

The real stupidity is in the folks believing those guys when they said there was no danger. People can be dumb sheep at times.

 

[WWTEng]

I almost that this was from Onion news.

 

[rb1957]

well it is from fox ...

after the initial tremors, the public were concerned, "will there be another quake?". the politican wanted to reassure them. the scientists probably answered his question with precise (unreassuring) language "at this time we do not anticipate another seismic event, but prediction is difficult". the politican wanted to reassure the general public "don't worry". that'd make the politican guilty (of misleading the public).

now, if the scientists said "there won't be another quake", well that's a pretty foolish statement and they should take the fall.

if they said "there won't be another quake in the foreseeable future", that's again different (if anyone asked them to quantify "foreseeable future").

i'm willing to bet that there's a non-scientist riding shot-gun for the scientists, working as a filter between them and the outside world and maybe the question and the response was lost in translation.

 

[Walterke]

prosecutors insist that the trial is not about predicting the unpredictable,(...) instead, the scientists and officials had inadequately assessed the risk of a quake

What exactly is the difference between these two?

NX 7.5.5.4 with Teamcenter 8 on win7 64
Intel Xeon @3.2GHz
8GB RAM
Nvidia Quadro 2000

 

[woodman88]

rb1957 -
"i'm willing to bet that there's a non-scientist riding shot-gun for the scientists, working as a filter between them and the outside world and maybe the question and the response was lost in translation."
So these scientists had their heads so far down into the ground that they never heard what their "non-scientist riding shot-gun" said? If they did hear it and they decided not to correct the statement, is this okay?

Garth Dreger PE - AZ Phoenix area
As EOR's we should take the responsibility to design our structures to support the components we allow in our design per that industry standards.

 

[Walterke]

It's their job to report to their boss. Whatever the boss does with that information is his responsibility, not theirs.

If a vendor says a certain machine will survive for 20 years, and it's only designed to last for 2, that's not the engineer's fault.

NX 7.5.5.4 with Teamcenter 8 on win7 64
Intel Xeon @3.2GHz
8GB RAM
Nvidia Quadro 2000

 

[rb1957]

yes, but if you Know that someone is misrepresenting your facts i think you have a professional responsibility to do something.

at least ask the other guy "why are you saying that ?"
"oh, i know you're always very conservative. i know we've been selling these machines for forty years and none have ever failed in service" is a fairly reasonable response.

"i'm just making it up" is different, and the question then might be "are lives at risk ?"

then there's "whistle-blowing", if the backroom scientists came out (so to speak) and said, "no, this thing's going to blow any minute now", well, there'd be consequences. and if it didn't happen, well there's a children's story about he boy who called wolf!

 

[BAretired]

Enzo Boschi, the then-president of Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology and now a defendant in the case, seemed to allude to this uncertainty in a March 31, 2009, meeting in L'Aquila, a medieval city in Abruzzo. Comparing the situation to a large quake that struck L'Aquila in 1703, Boschi said, "It is unlikely that an earthquake like the one in 1703 could occur in the short term, but the possibility cannot be totally excluded."

In a press conference after the meeting, however, Department of Civil Protection official Bernardo De Bernardinis, also a defendant in the case, struck a more soothing tone, saying that the situation posed "no danger" and urging residents to relax.

Less than a week later, on April 6, a 6.3-magnitude quake struck in Abruzzo. L'Aquila's medieval buildings crumbled, killing 309 people and injuring more than 1,500.

Looks like Bernardo made a pretty dumb statement by saying there was no danger.

BA

 

[msquared48]

Sounds like the same tourism dollars vs public safety conflict of interest depicted in "Jaws".

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering

http://mmcengineering.tripod.com

 

[dik]

I understand that engineers who had buildings collapse in the Skopje earthquake about 50 years ago, were taken out and shot!

Dik

 

[BigInch]

That is a simple case of lawyers ensuring that any fact they use is twisted. How strange is that. "Prosecutors have portrayed De Barnardinis as a victim of bad information from the team of seismologists".

Besides I think he's right. Would not a series of small quakes tend to ensure that stresses did not mount up until a big snap was possible. I wouldn't be a bit surprised, if it turns out that the seismologists told him something like that, right or wrong.


"People will work for you with blood and sweat and tears if they work for what they believe in......" - Simon Sinek

 

[msquared48]

If my memory serves me correctly, didn't a certain captain recently sink a perfectly gooe ship recently too through negligence?

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering

http://mmcengineering.tripod.com

 

[ishvaaag]

Death in Venice, Luchino Visconti, there's no black death pest in Venice.

 

[ishvaaag]

... err, THOMAS MANN, a good one, of "las verdades del barquero" (the truths of Caron, maybe).