A couple of weeks ago, a court in Italy sentenced seven seismologists to six years in prison. The scientists were charged with manslaughter for wrongly reassuring citizens about the risk of earthquakes in the province of L’Aquila.
The Swiss paper Le Courrier commented on October 24:
“Numerous scientists – in Italy, but also in the U.S. and Switzerland – denounced this sentence, calling it a ‘dangerous precedent….’ Indeed some are asking if in the future it will be necessary to punish meteorologists who are wrong about the trajectory of a tornado, or biologists who fail to correctly predict the scale of an epidemic.
“These comparisons are eloquent, but somewhat off the mark. In fact the court did not sentence the scientists for not being able to foresee the earthquake, but for failing to communicate adequately what they knew before the disaster.”
Eric Koch’s new book, The Golden Years: Five Stories, was launched on Saturday, March 16. The book is available from the 
This distinction, between punishment on the one hand for bad forecasting and on the other for withholding information of great public significance, has not been noted before, at least not in the reports reaching this part of the world.
If the facts as reported by “Le Courier” are correct, we have here a demonstration of the virtually universal inability of the press to get the facts right. I have had lengthy involvement in two fields of activity which very often produce newsworthy stories of a hard factual nature. In my experience, the media, both print and electronic, absolutely routinely got the facts wrong. You could count on it.
A little incompetent but innocent misleading of the public is one thing, but I have seen worthwhile careers ruined and plenty of other damage done by bad reporting — I mean factual reporting, not commentary or what laughingly passes for “journalism” these days.
Of course, if “Le Courier” is wrong, that proves my point too.
“Pray don’t talk to me about the weather, Mr. Worthing. Whenever people talk to me about the weather, I always feel quite certain that they mean something else. And that makes me quite nervous.”
Oscar Wilde
The Importance of being Eanest