Ben,

The BBC report (which is dated November 2014) is uninformative. The trial did not involve "a fundamental misunderstanding of earthquake science", although the BBC is right that many have argued that it did.



The outcome of the trial was 85 predictable right from before it even began. The mistake that commentators and analysts made over and over again was to take it all at face value. How naive! Context was everything, and context explained almost everything. The trial and its outcome were entirely a function of wider issues in the uneasy relationship between the executive and the judiciary in Italy, no more no less than that. The only added ingredient was the fight against official arrogance. It has been going on or decades and has assumed many guises, but this time it was resoundingly lost.



On the basis of what I have just written, the outcome should have been 100% predictable, but the story had a quirk. One of the defendents, Bernardo De Bernadinis, had part of his conviction definitively confirmed on appeal. This was a morsel thrown to the hard-working lawyers who had prepared such a meticulous case for the prosecution.



Actually, there are two contexts to this trial. The one I mentioned above was the politico-legal one. This has generated a new context in which the relationship between science and academics, on the one hand, and the government, on the other, has become severely polarised. Indeed, one might call it two armed camps in which, predictably, the government forces have the upper hand. This is where the fight against arrogance has been lost. Evidence of this can be seen in Enzo Boschi's self-absolving statement in Science magazine, and Science's refusal to print any other point of view.



De Bernadinis was deemed culpable after a lengthy trial and two levels of judicial appeal. The Government's reaction to his conviction was to appoint him President of ISPRO, a prestigious quasi-autonomous government think-tank based in Rome. The latest news is that the national Department of Civil Protection (DPC) brought De Bernadinis in to help direct relief operations in the Amatrice earthquake. I noted his presence in television clips filmed inside the DPC headquarters. This fact did not go unobserved by the country's journalists, who cried scandal - and the other armed camp, who regarded it as a power statement and a further demonstration of arrogance.



The trial of the "Aquila Seven" confirms the reputation of Italy as the most sophisticated country in the world. As a result of this, it is hardly surprising that much of the great volume of comment and analysis about the trial has been so utterly misleading that it has not been worth reading.



Kind regards,

David



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Subject: The L'Aquila controversy continues



What do you think?



http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29996872 



BEN



Dr. Ben Wisner

Aon-Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre, University College London, UK & Sokoine University of Agriculture, Morogoro, Tanzania & Environmental Studies Program, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH, USA



"People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care."