How far has Rome come in 400 years? Not very far if you're an Italian seismologist. Last week, an Italian court convicted six scientists of manslaughter, sentencing them to six years in prison for failing to give adequate warning of a deadly earthquake which destroyed the City of L'Aquila in 2009, killing more than 300 people.
If incomprehensible verdicts like this become common, mankind will stifle science simply be forcing it to always err on the side of caution. Imagine a world where every tremor, approaching storm, or rising river was met with evacuation orders. In L'Aquila, what would authorities have done had they received a warning of a possible earthquake? Evacuated the region for a month or more waiting for the "all clear"? Reinforced buildings that are 700 years old? We only have to look to Hurricane Katrina to see how futile advanced warnings often are at getting citizens to act.
In tragedies like the one in L'Aquila we look for someone to blame. Property was destroyed and loved ones were lost, but finding fault with the scientists who have not yet conquered the discipline of predicting earthquakes is dangerous.
Science has marched on since Galileo's time, growing in leaps and bounds. With an appeal pending for the six scientists found guilty of failing to predict an earthquake, it remains to be seen if society's regard for science has also grown.
