Aftershocking verdictFollow

Well, we *shouldn't* be getting major tropical storms, much less two years in a row...I blame global warningthe Obama administration.

That's a few towns north of me, and what you typically see as the land mark for this area. The next one you're likely to notice is Manahawkin.

Yes. If it had happened in the US. And said scientists would rapidly learn to not lend their expertise to any statements which might be misconstrued in a way which might result in folks getting killed. See how the free market takes care of this?

What happened in this case was that the local government had a group of scientists show up to give a presentation about the probability of a large earthquake, and then followed it up with a PR guy telling the people there was nothing to worry about. This was not done for the sake of public safety, but to debunk one amateur who was telling people that a big earthquake was coming and to prepare for the worst. Turns out he was right and the scientists were wrong.


Point being that (as I thought I clearly pointed out above) scientists have become complacent with being paid by government agencies to provide scientific backup for policies. Now when those policies are based on good science and used in legitimate ways, there's no problem. But when the policies are less about science and more about PR, you get into problems. That was the case here. The government PR guy used the scientists to basically attack some guy who he felt was scaring the public. Instead of simply advocating caution but not panic (as a responsible government should have done), someone decided to debunk the amateur. And in the process ended out killing a bunch of people. The scientists knew that this was happening and allowed themselves to be used in this manner.



I didn't say that. The methods of responsibility matter.

Edited, Oct 29th 2012 5:49pm by gbaji