L’Aquila was largely destroyed by earthquakes in 1461 and 1703. The city was rebuilt, eventually grew to more than 73,000 inhabitants, and remained stable for more than 300 years – until October 2008, when tremors began again. From January 1 through April 5, 2009, 304 additional tremors were reported.
Italy’s National Commission for Prediction and Prevention of Major Risks, which comprised the seven men now on trial, met in L’Aquila for one hour on March 31, 2009, to assess the earthquake swarms. According to the minutes, Enzo Boschi, President of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, was asked if they were precursors to an earthquake resembling the one in 1703. He replied: “It is unlikely that an earthquake like the one in 1703 could occur in the short term, but the possibility cannot be totally excluded.”
On April 6, 2009, a 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck L’Aquila and nearby towns, killing more than 300 people and injuring more than 1,500. The quake also destroyed roughly 20,000 buildings, temporarily displacing another 65,000 people.
More than a year later, in July 2010, prosecutor Fabio Picuti charged the Commission members with manslaughter and negligence for failing to warn the public of the impending risk. The trial began last September, and is expected to last for months, if not years.
After Picuti made the charges public in June 2010, Alan Leshner, Executive Publisher of Science, sent an open letter of protest to Italian President Giorgio Napolitano on behalf of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He wrote that the “charges against these scientists are both unfair and naïve….[T]here is no accepted scientific method for earthquake prediction that can be reliably used to warn citizens of an impending disaster.” The American Geophysical Union and thousands of other scientists also objected.
Picuti reportedly responded: “I’m not crazy. I know they can’t predict earthquakes. The basis of the charges is not that they didn’t predict the earthquake. As functionaries of the state, they had certain duties imposed by law: to evaluate and characterize the risks that were present in L’Aquila.”
In 1989, a United States National Research Council report, Improving Risk Communication, recommended that one-way communication from experts to non-experts be replaced with an “interactive process of exchange of information and opinion.” The report suggested that risk communication is successful only if those involved are satisfied that they are adequately informed about the relevant issues, given the limits of available knowledge. Yet such information exchange remains a problem – and not only in Italy – more than 20 years later.
The interactions between science, technology, and law are growing increasingly complex. As science and technologies evolve, risk assessments and the dialogue between scientists and governments must adapt. Both sides must continually determine, before disaster strikes, whether existing laws provide scientists and administrators with clear, realistic standards for their analyses and public communications. If they do not, the best qualified scientists and administrators might be frightened away.
In 2011, the National Research Council and the US Federal Judicial Center issued the 1,016-page third edition of the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence. Although its purpose is to help judges and attorneys to understand the science from which legal evidence is derived, its index contains no entry for earthquakes. Furthermore, the manual mentions risk communication only briefly, in the context of medical testimony.
Given such shortcomings, courses on science and engineering and their social applications should become part of the core training and continuing education of those in law, public administration, and official policymaking positions. Legislators, prosecutors, and judges, in particular, need to understand what natural sciences, social sciences, and engineering can and cannot offer.
At the same time, natural scientists must become better educated to work effectively with engineers, public administrators, and social scientists (for example, economists, demographers, and psychologists) to communicate the consequences of scientific findings, especially when high risks are involved.
Those risks will not go away. In February 2011, almost 200 people died when a 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck Christchurch, New Zealand. The following month, Japan’s Tōhoku earthquake killed almost 16,000 people. As the anniversary of that earthquake approaches on March 11, Japanese researchers predicted in January 2012 that another major earthquake will strike the southern Kanto region, including Tokyo, by 2016 with 70% probability. The Big One will one day strike California. Will we be ready?
Joel E. Cohen is Professor of Populations at The Rockefeller
University
and Columbia
University.
Joel E. Cohen:
紐約——在一座名為拉奎拉 (L’Aquila) 的意大利小城裡，有六位地震學家以及一位政府官員被送上了法庭。雖然此事在國外並未引起多大的注意，但它對科學家，工程師，行政管理者以及司法系統所造成的影響卻無遠弗屆。
拉奎拉這座城市曾經在1461年和1703年遭地震嚴重破壞。人們災後重建，最終發展成為一座擁有超過七萬三千人的城市，並維持了三百多年的穩定——直到2008年10月重新出現微震為止，而在隨後的2009年1月1日到4月5日間又發生了合共304次微震。
而由上述7位受審者所組成的意大利國家大型災害預防委員會於2009年3月31日在拉奎拉召開了一小時的地震評估會議。根據當時的會議記錄，有人詢問意大利國家地球物理學及火山學研究中心主任恩佐·波斯齊（Enzo
Boschi）這些微震是否會是一場類似1703年地震的前兆。波斯齊回答說：“短期來說不可能發生類似1703年那樣的災害，但也無法完全排除這種可能性。”
在此次地震發生一年多之后的2010年7月，檢查官法比奧·皮庫迪（Fabio
Picuti）以誤殺和玩忽職守罪對委員會成員提起公訴，認為他們未能將如此迫近的危險告知公眾。法庭於去年9月年開庭，預計審理過程就算不超過一年，至少也將持續數月。
在皮庫迪在2010年6月公開此項起訴之時，《科學》雜志執行出版人艾倫·萊施納（Alan
Leshner）代表美國科學促進會向意大利總統喬治·納波利塔諾（Giorgio Napolitano）遞交了公開抗議信。他在信中寫到：“對這些科學家的指控是不公平而且幼稚的……對於地震的預測，目前並沒有公認可靠的科學預警方法可以使民眾避免一場即將降臨的災害。”美國地球物理學聯盟以及數千位科學家也反對這一指控行為。
據報道，皮庫迪回應說：“我並不是瘋了。我知道他們無法預測地震。這些指控的依據也並不是因為他們未能預測地震。但作為國家公職人員，他們承擔著法律賦予的特殊責任：衡量並定義在拉奎拉所出現的那些風險。”
在1989年，一份名為《增強危機溝通》的美國國家研究委員會報告就建議使用一種“交換信息和意見的互動程序”來取代原先那種由專家來知會非專家的單向溝通方式。報告認為由於可供利用的知識有限，隻有在所有參與者都認為自己得到了相關事務充分信息的情況下才能實現危機溝通。但這種信息交換方式在超過20後——也不僅限於意大利——依然未能完善。
科學，技術和法律之間的互動正逐漸變得復雜。隨著科學技術的介入，危機風險評估以及科學家與政府官員之間的對話也必須做出調整。在災難襲來之前，雙方都必須持續評估當前的法律是否為科學家和官員們的分析和公共溝通提供了清晰可行的操作標准。如果做不到這一點，那麼那些最優秀的科學家和行政管理者都將噤若寒蟬。
在2011年，美國國家研究委員會以及聯邦司法中心發布了厚達1016頁的《科學証據參考手冊》第三版。雖然該手冊的目的就是為了幫助法官和律師理解法律証據背后的科學依據，但其索引中卻沒有任何關於地震的條目。此外手冊也只是在醫療証詞方面粗略提到了一些與危機溝通有關的內容。
考慮到這些不足之處，必須在對法律界人士，政府官員和政策制訂者們的核心培訓和繼續教育中加入關於科學工程以及其社會應用的內容。而立法者，檢察官和法官也尤其應當明白自然科學，社會科學和工程學有其長處，但也不是萬能的。
與此同時，自然科學家必須學會與工程師，公共行政管理者和社會科學家（比如經濟學家，人口學家以及心理學家）更有效地進行合作並交流某些科學發現所可能揭示的後果，尤其是當這些發現關系到某些重大風險之時。
實際上，這些風險一直盤踞在我們身旁。在2011年2月，新西蘭克萊斯特徹奇市的裡氏6.3級地震就造成了近200人死亡。而在隨後的3月，日本東北大地震奪去了1.6萬人的生命。在今年3月11日的大地震周年祭臨近之時，日本科學家在2012年1月發表預測，認為在2016年以前在包括東京在內的京都南部地區有70%的可能會爆發另一場大地震。那麼面對有朝一日可能襲擊加利福尼亞的大地震，我們美國人又准備好了嗎？
Joel E. Cohen 是洛克菲勒大學以及哥倫比亞大學人口學教授