V-Tog wrote:
Archaic Smile wrote: I am NOT saying that the scientists are guilty, I'm just mentioning that we can't determine whether or not this was an "innocent mistake" given the limited information in the article.
My title for this thread is slightly biased. But whether or not they underestimated the threat, is that not still an honest mistake?
I cannot see that this prosecution would be being condemned on a global scale unless the people who know about such things are convinced that they did nothing wrong. It all sounds like a big witch-hunt.
Take this example:
A weather-forecaster predicts a dry sunny day in December.
Someone goes out for a walk planning to enjoy the sun.
A storm starts up.
The person gets hit by lightening and dies.
In Britain it does nothing but rain in the winter (and the summer :laugh: ). Should the weather forecaster have pointed out that although all indications were that the weather should be good, we are very prone to bad weather? Should they be sentenced to several years in jail for failing to do so?
'
In other words, you're asking me to trust that the American Geophysical Union is correct in determining that whatever the scientists said (that we don't know) was reasonable and appropriate given the threat (that we also don't know).
And that is probably fair to do.
But I repeat that science and scientific advice is not free from bias, especially coming from government environmental agencies. There's a lot of politics that goes on that we don't know about concerning threat levels and recommendations (global warming is an example of this).
Drawing a comparison with the general weather is not a good comparison because like Ren said, there are infrastructure improvements and building codes to prepare for an earthquake if an earthquake was likely to strike the area in such and such a time frame. A sudden storm is not something that one would need to spend lots of money to defend against. Italy has been in debt for quite a while and it seems reasonable to assume that infrastructure improvements would have stretched the city's budget, ergo, a reason to pressure scientists to underestimate the threat level.
I am not saying that this is what occurred, but that it is a possibility, one among many. We just don't know the facts in this case, so it comes down to whether or not we trust the American Geophysical Union to have come to an unbiased review of the science and the issued warnings, or not. Either way, it is still not possible for us to "know" and it is good practice to be leery of articles written in popular media about science, especially science issues, because of the conventions of journalism to give both sides equal coverage when evidence falls heavily on one side versus the other, and the inability of journalists to either understand or explain scientific issues, as they are generally not educated in science. Lastly, the goal of the media is to stir up interest in current events and to make a profit off that interest, so everything read needs to be viewed with that in mind, as well.
Anyway, I'm really not as paranoid about the media as it might seem from my comments in this thread, I just wanted to raise awareness of other possibilities.
