[mogadsheu]

I sat in on a lecture by a Stanford geophysicist, and he said that seismologists have every legal incentive to communicate that a large earthquake is imminent in the Bay, even if their work is inconclusive or suggests otherwise.

They might get sued or prosecuted if they say it’s safe and a big one strikes.

[nextaccountic]

Are there any other professional category that gets sued if they don't predict disaster within tight timing?

Imagine suing epidemiologists because they didn't predict Covid-19 in a timely manner.

[karlgkk]

No epidemiologists were going around saying "eh it could never happen". In fact, many of them were warning after SARS. Trump actually took apart Obama's virus disaster-readiness warehouses and other programs in 2018-2019. Very bad timing, many such cases!

I would suspect the majority of disaster-related experts are not going to be so laid back.

[nextaccountic]

Yeah but couldn't seismologists just never say anything about the matter?

[sandspar]

Similarly, I've known of a psychic who was known for regularly making catastrophic earthquake predictions. Naturally he was wrong 99 times out of 100. But that 1 he got right was enough to build his whole career. "The Great Zambini, who predicted the 1998 earthquake"... People just forgot all his misses, only remembered his hit.

[peterleiser]

That will not happen in the US court system. Also, the Guardian article below about this happening to scientists was in the Italian court system, not the US.

[Calvin02]

That seems odd. What would be the basis of such a lawsuit?

[colinb]

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/oct/22/scientists-c... perhaps.

[Modified3019]

Wow that’s fucked up

Edit: looks like they eventually were saved in appeals court https://www.nature.com/articles/515171a and finally completely cleared after their Supreme Court ruling https://www.science.org/content/article/italy-s-supreme-cour...

Still a lot of time and money wasted on absolute bullshit.

[peterleiser]

That was Italy, not the US.