Freedom For Italian Scientists

The 6 expert-scientists and a government official were all sentenced to six years in prison on multiple manslaughter charges by Judge Marco Billi on Monday afternoon.
They were sentenced to six years in jail in a watershed ruling in a case that has and should provoke outrage in the international (science) community.
The experts were also ordered to pay more than 9 million euros ($11.7 million) in damages to survivors and inhabitants. Under the Italian justice system, the seven will remain free men until they have exhausted two chances to appeal the verdict - one of which will hopefully overturn the decision.
When looking at probabilities of earthquakes, there is no prediction method that will ever tell you with exact certainty whether an earthquake will occur tomorrow or in 1000 years. The probabilities remain so low, that only tiny changes may be able to be made.
If scientists and earthquake engineers in the future are unable to explain the concept of 'probability' to people in other fields and the public without reprisal then how ever alert the public or make scientific breakthroughs in the field of earthquake engineering.
This sets a very dangerous precedent for giving advice and we fears it will discourage scientists from offering their advice on natural hazards and trying to help society in this way.

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