Be wary in drawing clear distinctions between scientists and bureaucrats, because figures such as presidents or directors of scientific institutions, here in Italy, are usually more bureaucrats or politicians than scientists, and their actions or statements might not be motivated by science alone.
So while it might be fun to imagine us italians running with our pitchforks after a bunch of lab-rats to burn them at the stake for their failure at quake-prediction, what's really happening is that a prosecutor has doubts about the “quality” of work of some people paid lotsa public money to be part of a committee whose task was to assess seismic risks for that area at that time. Was the risk assessed correctly or not?
And if not, why?
Note how (http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100622/full/465992a.html) nobody is willing to take responsibility for the reassuring statements that in the end convinced the otherwise alarmed population to stay at home. The scientists say that the meeting was too short to consider all the data, while the civil protection agency responds to them that they should have not waited six months to object to that.
An aside: back in 2009, before and after the quake, there was one guy claiming to be able to foresee when and where earthquakes would strike with a certain precision by measuring radon emissions. Except the quake he foresaw a week earlier nearby L'Aquila never happened, and after the big one caused 300 deaths, he went on record saying to have foreseen it by something like 6 to 24 hours, depending on which interview. He became somewhat popular at the time, and probably still is, to the point that the public opinion might be left with the notion that quakes can indeed be foreseen - this trial might not be that bad thing for science after all.
So while it might be fun to imagine us italians running with our pitchforks after a bunch of lab-rats to burn them at the stake for their failure at quake-prediction, what's really happening is that a prosecutor has doubts about the “quality” of work of some people paid lotsa public money to be part of a committee whose task was to assess seismic risks for that area at that time. Was the risk assessed correctly or not?
And if not, why?
Note how (http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100622/full/465992a.html) nobody is willing to take responsibility for the reassuring statements that in the end convinced the otherwise alarmed population to stay at home. The scientists say that the meeting was too short to consider all the data, while the civil protection agency responds to them that they should have not waited six months to object to that.
An aside: back in 2009, before and after the quake, there was one guy claiming to be able to foresee when and where earthquakes would strike with a certain precision by measuring radon emissions. Except the quake he foresaw a week earlier nearby L'Aquila never happened, and after the big one caused 300 deaths, he went on record saying to have foreseen it by something like 6 to 24 hours, depending on which interview. He became somewhat popular at the time, and probably still is, to the point that the public opinion might be left with the notion that quakes can indeed be foreseen - this trial might not be that bad thing for science after all.