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In a ever more connected world, whether justified or not, the possibility that scientific information can be used to produce generalized behaviors by populations results in the need to better understand the processes of science communication. Consequently, it raises serious questions about the ethical message of the communication itself, and the wa...
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... present most. In early 2011, rumours sparked that the town of Rome, Italy, was going to be hit by a strong earthquake the following May. This news had no scientific fundaments, although it was supposed to be a prophecy by an amateur seismologist, Raffaele Bendandi who was quite well known for having apparently predicted other earthquakes in Italy (Georgiadis. and Pescerelli Lagorio 2012). A description of the studies conducted by Bendandi is out of the aim of this paper, however it is acknowledged that his past prophecies were too generic to be considered real predictions and that the quake in Rome was not even mentioned in his papers. However the announcement was quickly disseminated, with the cooperation of newspapers ...
... In this era of global communication and social networks, there are preferential ways which facilitate and amplify the spreading of rumours. This happened, for example, with news appearing on the web concerning the purported prediction of an earthquake in Rome on the 11th May 2011 (Georgiadis and Pescerelli Lagorio 2012;Nostro et al. 2012), not to mention the Mayan prophecy of disasters potentially resulting from the alignment of celestial bodies in December 2012. ...
Many professions have codes of conduct or deontological rules, but geoscientists dealing with natural hazards have been working on their own in the last decades not yet completing the task. A series of recent natural hazards that have hit the society in several parts of the world have made the call. Deontology is one of the main ethical decision-making approaches for driving actions leading to what is moral/ethically correct. To contribute with the construction of such a code, we present a road map to formulate this code based in the question-driven approach. Some considerations may be presented as guidelines: (a) it cannot be designed to the self-protection of the geoscientists but to safeguard society and the environment (even if it will contribute to); (b) it has to be constructed collectively; (c) it requires deep changes in educational systems, better preparing the citizens to deal with some scientific concepts. Without (c), (a) and (b) would not be enough. In addition, in constructing a geoethics code, we have to consider the three periods in the time-line of an extreme event: before, during, and after. Each period has particularities that will indicate different actions and conducts. Finally, the code, constructed collectively among practitioners, cannot be just a collection of “steps to be followed” but a real bridge between the moral consequences of being the privileged small part of the society who hold the scientific knowledge and the full society and the environment, for which we use to say we work for.
... In this era of global communication and social networks, there are preferential ways which facilitate and amplify the spreading of rumours. This happened, for example, with news appearing on the web concerning the purported prediction of an earthquake in Rome on the 11th May 2011 (Georgiadis and Pescerelli Lagorio 2012;Nostro et al. 2012), not to mention the Mayan prophecy of disasters potentially resulting from the alignment of celestial bodies in December 2012. ...
In the aftermath of an earthquake, pseudo-scientific, scaremongering rumours spread very quickly and with greater effect than correct scientific information. The aim of this article is to describe the authors’ observations and examine how rumours linked to seismic shocks spread in the community following the strong 2012 seismic sequence in Emilia (northern Italy). During the two mainshocks, 27 people lost their lives, over 400 persons were injured and 14,000 families were evacuated. In the weeks following the mainshocks, in collaboration with other universities and research groups, we carried out field surveys, organized interviews and public meetings with the local population and held direct contacts with journalists and reporters. The mainshocks of this sequence (ML= 5.9 on 20th May and ML= 5.8 on 29th May) found the local population culturally and psychologically unprepared. As a consequence, there were attitudes of suspicion and lack of trust towards the authorities and the scientific community. Many people considered these earthquakes induced by human activities such as exploitation of subsurface resources or fracking. Moreover, in spite of the experts explaining in all possible ways the origin of earthquakes and emphasizing their unpredictability, the population has given credit to various groundless alarms on the basis of gas emissions, bubbling water and ground fractures. In order to effectively counter the spreading of wrong convictions about earthquakes, a constant, updated dialogue must be kept up between the population and the scientific community.
The purposes of communication range from simple transmission of information to motivation
of people to act, to giving advises, suggesting actions or, in particular circumstances, even
giving orders and directions. Often any of these targets needs intermediate steps, with the
distinct or integrated intervention of more ‘‘experts’’ or communicators, but generally
speaking these aims are independent and achieved separately. In either cases for each aspect
there is an ‘‘expert’’ who has the knowledge, the experience and possibly the power to carry
out the relative duty. Boundaries must be then designated to make sure that any speaker deals
with his/her own expertise and does not interfere with the others’. Failures in doing this turn
in a bad-incomplete-ineffective-inaccurate or even wrong communication. The recent grow
of interest of the public towards Geoscience increased the need for information and, as a
consequence, the episodes of bad communication. In this presentation I discuss whether
ethics may represent a tool to fix boundaries between spokesmen and be used to avoid
interferences. The subject is complicated by the nature of ethics, that applies to the moral and
not to the rational behaviour; but there are other aspects that render the discussion intricate,
including the different principles of ethics for every kind of communicator and the fact that
the concept of ethics, and its principles, must be flexible (since it somewhat depends on the
circumstances). The results of the analysis described here can be briefly summarized as
follows. The fundamental principles of ethics would probably be enough for distinguishing
an appropriate conduct and achieve a fair communication; unfortunately the personal
expectations, the fear to appear unprepared, the desire for greater visibility and the
unconscious will to be more helpful than the situation would require make communicators to
fail some of their ethical obligations. Moreover, the emergency conditions, the difficulty of
having available many speakers from different fields, the strict time for communication, the
pressing demands of the media make much more difficult to strictly follow the ethical
principles. In my view, the main deviation from ethics is when the speaker expresses personal
opinions; this is quite normal for a scientist presenting his/her study within a workshop or a
scientific meeting, but becomes dangerous when presented in public. It is even unfair for
journalists or politicians. It becomes very harmful if uttered from media entertainers. And,
above all, this failure affects one of the main obligations common to all ethics, a sort of root
of moral behaviour, that is to ensure impartiality
Scientists and policy makers issuing predictions and warnings of impending natural disaster are faced with two major challenges, that is, failure to warn and issuing a false alarm. The consequences of failure to warn can be serious for society overall, for example, significant economic losses, heavy infrastructure and environmental damage, large number of human casualties, and social disruption. Failure to warn can also have serious for specific individuals, for example, legal proceedings against disaster research scientists, as in the L'Aquila earthquake affair. The consequences of false alarms may be less serious. Nevertheless, false alarms may violate the principle of nonmaleficence (do no harm), affect individual autonomy (eg, mandatory evacuations), and may result in the "cry wolf" effect. Other ethical issues associated with natural disasters include the promotion of global justice through international predisaster technical assistance and postdisaster aid. Social justice within a particular country is promoted through greater postdisaster aid allocation to the less privileged.
