<story><title>Italian seismologists to be tried for manslaughter</title><url>http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/05/italian_seismologists_to_be_tr.html</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>alexqgb</author><text>This isn&apos;t the first time Italy has reduced itself to the status of reactionary backwater by attacking scientists, Galileo being a case in point.&lt;p&gt;In the wake of that travesty, Louis XIV didn&apos;t have a hard time convincing Cassini to abandon his post in Bologna and emigrate to France, where he could continue his work safely. Given the extraordinary military advantage conveyed by Cassini&apos;s work in improving cartography through increasingly sophisticated astronomical observation, the Netherlands and England were quick to join the seventeenth-century&apos;s war for technical talent.&lt;p&gt;Not grasping the extent to which the world was passing it by, the Papacy kept Galileo&apos;s works on the list of banned books until the mid-nineteenth century. By the time they came off, Italy&apos;s once formidable lead had been squandered permanently.&lt;p&gt;File this current fiasco under &apos;lessons not learned&apos;.</text></comment>
<story><title>Italian seismologists to be tried for manslaughter</title><url>http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/05/italian_seismologists_to_be_tr.html</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>barrkel</author><text>That&apos;s phenomenally stupid. Rather than getting best estimates, they are explicitly requesting that scientists over-estimate the probability of disaster and cry wolf. That in turn will mean they will have even less warning should something genuine turn up.</text></comment>