Italy has a messy history listening to and even jailing its scientists, as they go about the normal process of empiricism.
https://www.nature.com/news/italian-seismologists-cleared-of...
Scientists, acting in a public service context, charged with negligence after a natural disaster they dismissed as unlikely resulted in 300+ deaths. That isn't the same as putting scientists on trail for reporting factual but inconvenient data. All their sentences were overturned as well.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/10/seven-year-legal-sag...
They didn't dismiss it! They only stated that imbecile Gioacchino Giuliani was talking out of nothing and people had better to ignore him.
Earthquakes cannot yet be foreseen with an adequate precision. Fullstop.
After the fact, judges were clearly overwhelmed with emotions when they forced themselves to read a mere pseudo-coincidence as an unknown genius researcher being silenced by the corrupt scientific elite. The judgement was overthrown in appeal, and the appeal outcome validated by supreme court, with the staement: il fatto non sussiste (there is no case).
https://www.nature.com/news/italian-scientists-under-investi...
Failing to heed the warnings of scientists is unfortunately not something we can stereotype on Italians alone...
Yes, they were eventually cleared. Great. Some doubts remain but it cannot be proved beyond all reasonable doubt that they were witches. Not guilty!
I'm embarrassed by the anti-science positions taken in the US but those are hardly the same magnitude
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Monnett
Here's some original material:
https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/species/mammals/polar_be...
Another, equally embarassing story (a little off-topic in the context of olive oil ;) is the prosecution of Ilaria Capua (another scientist who had a bad encounter with the justice system).
The story you linked lays it all out, but it can't really be reduced to "jailing its scientists".
Not any more than any other countries. I've dealt with many people from all over Europe thanks to a particular project I was involved in, and bad behaviors were truly cross-country (misappropriation of results, pressure to change authorship, "games" to move funding to allies or away from enemies...).
EDIT: What I mean is not that everyone is bad, but that rather bad behaviors even in my country are in the median with the others.
As a disclaimer, I am a scientist that is still working in Italy.
The truth of the matter is that the scientists were aware that they were in a situation of power over people, and in order to get people to stop annoying them with questions they lied and deceived people, which caused them to die.
It's ok to be wrong. It's ok to not know everything.
It is not ok to kill people by telling them that they are safe to go back to their homes when you know you have no idea, nor data to support that statement.