Scientists’ Earthquake-Manslaughter Convictions Overturned

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The credibility of Italy's entire scientific community has been restored.

—Stefano Gresta, President of the National
Institute of Geophysics (Nov. 11, 2014)

Well, we never doubted its scientific community. <checks blog to confirm that he never mocked Italy's scientific community> Just the legal one. But that one has at least partly redeemed itself today by clearing several seismologists of manslaughter charges that followed a 2009 earthquake. See "Italy Actually Going Through With Manslaughter Trial of Seismologists" (Sept. 19, 2011); "Seismologists Convicted of Not Predicting Earthquake" (Oct. 23, 2012).

According to AFP, the appellate court overturned all but one of the convictions, and even that one was downgraded to a suspended sentence that will not result in a criminal record. The written judgment itself reportedly will not be released for several months, but they were kind enough to deliver the result now.

As I mentioned before, Galileo had to wait 359 years for an apology, so maybe things are improving there.