This morning I received and email flier from the Geological Society publicising a new Publication on Geoethics: The Role and Responsibility of Geoscientists.
The description of the publication on the Geological Society Publishing House web site is as follows:
Can be yours for £85.00 or £42.00 if you are a Fellow or member of another qualifying organisation.
I am sure that this publication has its genesis with the court case in Italy where there was an attend to prosecute scientists for not accurately predicting that an earthquake was going to occur. This was the L'Aquila earthquake which occurred 2009 (not the ones which occurred in 1461 or 1703!).
In October 2012 six Italian scientists (and one government official) were prosecuted for failing to predict that the earthquake was going to occur. As I stated in Seminar 15, prediction of earthquakes is not an exact science and the prosecution and sentencing of 6 years in jail apiece was not considered by many to be sound. Fortunately the convictions were overturned in November 2014.
The trial and prosecution seems to have partly been due to the fact that an Italian lab technician claimed to have predicted that a major earthquake was going to occur in the area a month before after measuring increased levels of radon gas being emitted from the ground. Predicting earthquakes using radon emissions has been studied by scientists, but the results are inconsistent.
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