And Yet It Moved

An Italian judge has put the evidence-based community firmly in its place by sentencing seven members of the National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks to six years in prison for manslaughter, on the grounds that they offered an unjustifiably optimistic risk assessment a week before the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake. More than three hundred people died, tens of thousands were left homeless, Silvio Berlusconi and a peddler of eternal verities did a bit of posturing, and it must have been somebody's fault, although it is unclear whether anyone has suggested imprisoning the sixteenth Daddy Goodspeak for having neglected to pray the disaster away. To make it absolutely clear where the blame really lies, in addition to the prison sentences (higher than the prosecution demanded) the judge imposed a compensation payment of six and a half million pounds and a lifetime ban on each defendant holding public office. Several international bodies have apparently warned that a guilty verdict might deter scientists from advising governments; given the present orthodoxy, which dictates that faith makes policy and policy makes evidence, governments will find all this rather encouraging.