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Comment by leoc | Hacker News Reader

I am going to point out how much the vibes have shifted here. When earthquake scientists gave false reassurances in the run-up to the 2009 earthquake at L'Acquila, likely contributing to the many deaths there, Italian criminal proceedings resulted. At that time, though, the usual suspects decided that this was science under attack and there was high-level protest and indignation that scientists might face legal consequences for their statements. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_L%27Aquila_earthquake#Pro...

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I think that's an apples-to-oranges comparison.

First, keep in mind that while those scientists were originally convicted, they were exonerated on appeal. The appellate court's opinion was that the responsibility was on the public official who announced that the area was safe without first consulting the scientists.

Secondly, this case isn't clear cut. Some still fault the scientists for not correctly interpreting the seismology data and not speaking up against the public official who was supposedly to blame. There's a big question around whether these scientists were correct or not in their judgement.

At any rate, this is pretty far from scientific fraud. Seismology (as far as I, a layman, understands it) is not a science where you can make exact predictions. Being wrong about the future isn't fraud, it's just unlucky.

You're conflating outright fraud with a difference of scientific opinion?

The issue isn't whether someone else had a contrary opinion: the issue is that (just going by the linked reports) Bernardo De Bernardinis came out from the meeting with the scientists and informed the public that there was "no danger". Now, either the scientists felt that this was a reasonable summary of what they had said, or they didn't: either of those is bad, in different ways.

To be fair, it looks like there was fraud in the Italy case - just of the builders not the scientists.

Okay, honest question: in what world is a magnitude 5.9 a "major" earthquake? 5.x earthquakes happen multiple times per day somewhere, and the same area had known much worse earthquakes in the preceding century.

How bad do your buildings have to be to get a 3-digit death toll from something that weak? I'd expect a 3-digit toll for "number of fine-china plates broken".

Don't be a dick.

Christchurch was absolutely fucked by a 6.1 Mw(USGS) magnitude earthquake in 2011 - shallow depth and close to the city so we had severe outcomes. We have reasonably good earthquake building codes in New Zealand.

Poorer countries with more fragile infrastructure could be devastated by a smaller quake - depending on local circumstances.

The only thing that saved Christchurch from far far worse outcomes was that the most dangerous buildings were already empty because of damage from a larger earthquake in 2010.

I admit the log scale means that 6.1 is far bigger than 5.9... However you handwaved 5.x which shows your ignorance of log scales.

We had plenty of aftershocks below 6.1 - they are extremely unpleasant and have awful psychological effects on some people.

And we are hundreds of kilometers away from the major Southern Alps faultline - the equivalent to San Andreas. So we were blessed with some newly discovered minor faultlines.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Christchurch_earthquake

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Canterbury_earthquake

Why should scientists be held to higher account than, say, politicians?

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