They were members of the National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks, and they took it upon themselves to try to calm the residents of L'Aquila, Italy, after several tremors shook the ground. Unfortunately, a big one followed, and 309 people died.
This seemed more like a civil matter rather than a criminal one. But the prosecutor made it criminal. And the judge came back with a verdict -- six scientists and one bureaucrat were found guilty and sentenced to six years in the slammer. See BBC. Excerpt:
Prosecutors said the defendants gave a falsely reassuring statement before the quake, while the defence maintained there was no way to predict major quakes.
Both of those statements could be true. The problem was that the commissioners didn't fully explain to the recipients of their advice the risk involved in taking that advice. To quote a helpful explanation from a character in the movie Animal House, "You f***** up. You trusted us."
They should have had some American lawyers on hand to provide a shopworn disclaimer like, "Past performance doesn't guarantee future results."
We talked about this in 2011 when the prosecution commenced the action. See previously. And as we noted then, if this is a crime, those scientists who did all of that scare mongering about man made global warming should be next on the docket.
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