You may have heard about the 2009 earthquake in Italy that got several scientists convicted for not properly telling the population that one was imminent. Surprisingly I'm on the fence about this one. See, if that sentence were completely true, I would totally agree that Italy is out of its fucking mind. There's no way a seismologist can predict something like that. But that's not the full story. The town had experienced minor tremors prior to the big one and called in some dudes to ask if something's going to happen. They gave varying replies, but some of them said there's no danger of an earthquake, which then occurred. Yeah, then I'm going to blame them. Just like you can't predict when an earthquake happens, conversely you can't predict when it doesn't. So the town went back to their lives without realizing 300 of them would soon die.

Seismology is a reactionary science. Maybe some day we can give a date and time, but right now all they can do is examine the aftershocks. It's not like volcanology, where if you're looking at it carefully enough you can tell it's gonna blow. What the scientists should've just said is maybe. Whether that's enough to charge them, I don't know. I don't think it's the same category as an engineer saying a building is stable and then it collapses, but I don't think the seismologists acted properly in this situation either.