Hi Pavel and all,

I have been keeping up with the Italy earthquake trial news and read all of the post in this thread. My comments in this post were delayed because last Monday was the final U.S. Presidential Candidates debate. And for weeks I have been sending people reports important to the election etc. as fast as I can write (unfortunately - not very fast).

And, I would say that there is a very high probability that a fair amount of what was said by the two candidates in the debates was information from my reports. The following somewhat unusual statement from the Republican candidate that would indicate that:

In the final debate, he stated that,

“I agree (with the President). Doing research for developing new energy sources is something we need to be doing. But giving companies energy research dollars so that they can develop improved batteries for electric cars is not the same thing as doing energy source research.”

I can almost guarantee that that statement had to have come straight from one of my reports. It is in my opinion, very Un-Republican for a Republican candidate for any office to say that giving government funds to some profit making corporation is not a good idea.

As I have stated in other posts,

“I DO have contacts in high places (or low places if you think that all politicians are crooks – and many probably are – humor intended).”

A number of additional, critically important reports are being prepared for circulation before the Presidential Election on November 6, 2012.

Like most scientists, I like doing research. But like at least some of them, I don’t like writing reports, particularly ones that are likely to be read by some of the most powerful people on the planet. That would have to be frightening for anyone. But, someone has to do the work. Our elected officials aren’t going to get any smarter or develop any better senses of direction on their own.

THE EARTHQUAKE TRIAL - THE REST OF THE STORY

This is another URL related to the trial. And there are undoubtedly many more out there. But this was the closest that I have seen so far where the writer actually had some idea of what was going on.

http://world.time.com/2012/10/24/the-aquila-earthquake-verdict-where-the-guilt-may-really-lie/?xid=rss-topstories>

The following is the real story behind the earthquake trial story (in my opinion). And it is quite apparent from many of the other reports out there that scientists around the world still haven’t gotten the message in spite of those guilty verdicts and 6 year sentences.

True Science versus Popular Science (or) True Science versus Politically Correct Science

Scientists in general have a moral obligation to report what is true versus what is popular and inaccurate. However, they don’t have to report the truth in a manner that is unnecessarily offensive to people. But they should still try to report accurate information.

This is particularly true if the scientists are in a position where they are doing official disaster mitigation work for some government agency.

If they can’t report accurate information because it will get them into some type of political hot water then they need to find some way to change things that so that they can actually state what is accurate. Or at the very least, they should keep their mouths shut!

Unfortunately, scientists frequently don’t follow those rules. And here are two reasons why that happens:

PROBLEM # 1

They think that their jobs might be at risk. So they say or do whatever they think will protect their jobs.

If you look at some of the evidence collected for that trial you will see that perhaps the top agenda for officials in Italy was trying to keep the general public calm before that earthquake rather than presenting an accurate picture of what was happening. And they told some of the scientists that they wanted them to calm down the general public.

The scientists etc. then tried to do that. They probably thought that it was important for their job futures. But in the process they went too far to try to calm things down and insisted to people in that area that they had nothing to worry about. Then the earthquake occurred and people died.

What they should have instead told people was that,

“Forecasting earthquakes is still an inexact science. The scientific community cannot tell for certain at this time what is going to happen or not happen. And if people are worried and want to sleep in tents instead of in their homes then perhaps they should do that while making sure they don’t catch cold etc.”

Instead they reportedly insisted that, “There is absolutely nothing to worry about. You can sleep in your homes with complete safety.”

Those people were put on trial for insisting that there was nothing to worry about when no scientist anywhere could or should say anything like that for certain.

One of the problems here is that if you are a government official who is being paid to be responsible for the public safety and you tell people,

“We don’t know what to say to you about this.”

Then the general public might return by saying, “What are we paying you for? You are useless!” And then those government officials might get fired for being incompetent.

Which is better?

Choice # 1 - Be accused of being an incompetent government official or scientist and then be fired for being incompetent.

Choice # 2 - Tell people what they want to hear, what is “Politically Correct,” be horribly wrong, and then have to spend the next 6 years of your life in prison.

That sounds like a simple choice to make. But when your job could be on the line like that it can be very difficult to make the correct choice. And quite often, scientists make the wrong choice (for people reading this who are not scientists, Choice # 2 is the wrong choice).

PROBLEM # 2

When they are put under enough pressure, scientists will actually reprogram their brains so that they sincerely believe that something that is scientifically wrong is actually science truth!

They are in effect brainwashing themselves into believing something that is wrong.

This has been referred to as a number of different things over the years. One term is the “Galileo Syndrome.” Another is the “Stockholm Syndrome.”

Perhaps the most widely known case of this involved one of the greatest scientist of all times, Galileo Galilei.

Poor Galileo lived during an age when religious officials were the political authorities of the day. And contrary to popular belief, they actually liked him and his theories about how our universe works including his proposal that our local heavenly bodies including the Earth and the moon actually revolved around the sun. Everything did not revolve around the Earth.

Unfortunately for Galileo, he was apparently not a deep thinker when it came to politics. When he wrote a book on his theories some of his friends convinced him that he should criticize the religious authorities at the time in his book. I don’t actually know what he said about them. But it apparently got them quite upset.

They then said to themselves,

“We can’t tolerate this threat to our political power even though we like Galileo and his theories. And so we will have him put on trial and condemned as a heretic along with all of his theories. And people will be told that they can’t believe his theories.”

Put under that much pressure Galileo recanted and said,

“I was wrong. The Earth is the center of the universe. And all heavenly objects circle around it.”

That statement was apparently considered acceptable by the authorities. He was placed under a type of house arrest for the remainder of his life. And while under arrest he continued to write books explaining his theories and observations.

I don’t know if Galileo actually managed to brainwash himself into believing that the Earth truly is the center of the universe of if he was simply “lying through his teeth” in order to save his own hide! My guess was that he was telling a whopper in the hopes of getting out of trouble. The religious – political authorities probably knew that he was lying as did most people in the scientific world at that time. But as long as he wasn’t challenging the religious authorities in public they didn’t care.

The two morals of the story are:

1. Even one of the most extraordinary scientists of all time could be forced to present a lie as being the truth when he was put under enough pressure. And it is a lot easier for less extraordinary scientists living today to do the same thing, or to actually even brainwash themselves into believing the lie when it is one that makes life easier for them.

2 If you are a scientist who is working for some government agency, tell the truth even if it might get you fired. Prison food likely tastes terrible. And in prison they probably don’t have nearly as many channels on TV as people on the outside can get!

And as the late Paul Harvey used to say,

"That, ladies and gentlemen, is the rest of the story."

(Close enough)

These are personal opinions.