Italy's top scientists quit their government posts

On Tuesday, some of Italy's top scientists resigned from the government's disaster agency to protest the manslaughter conviction of seven geological experts for failing to predict the devastating earthquake in L'Aquila in 2009. As we noted yesterday, scientists across the world were appalled at the idea of holding scientists criminally responsible for failing to accurately predict the severity of future earthquakes, something that is notoriously difficult to do. Now the Italian government will have fewer scientists to call on to handle disasters.

The biggest name to clock out is one of Italy's top phyicists, Luciano Maiami.  A former head of the particle physics laboratory CERN in Geneva, Maiami is currently the head of Italy's top disaster body, the National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks, of which the seven convicted scientists were members. They received sentences of six years in prison for what prosecutors said were "incomplete, imprecise and contradictory" statements about the dangers of the quake. Maiami joined several other top scientists by declaring the verdict a "big mistake," and said he resigned because "there aren't the conditions to work serenely."

"These are professionals who spoke in good faith and were by no means motivated by personal interests, they had always said that it is not possible to predict an earthquake," he told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. "It is impossible to produce serious, professional and disinterested advice under this mad judicial and media pressure. This sort of thing doesn't happen anywhere else in the world." In no uncertain terms, he said, "This is the end of scientists giving consultations to the state."

Read the rest at The Atlantic Wire.