Friday, January 20, 2012

Forecasting peril

It has been reported that it could soon become an offence, punishable by a term in jail or a massive fine, to issue weather forecasts (including pollution forecasts) in South Africa without first getting permission from the national Weather Service. This has been variously interpreted as wishing to give the government–backed service a monopoly on commercial income available for forecasts or an attempt to punish those who issue false or alarmist predictions which frighten the people but turn out to be wrong.

Last September saw Italian seismologists put on trial for ‘failing to predict an earthquake’ – something which most scientists would agree is an impossible thing to do. The prosecutor denies however that he is mad: "I know they can't predict earthquakes. The basis of the charges is not that they didn't predict the earthquake. As functionaries of the state, they had certain duties imposed by law: to evaluate and characterize the risks that were present in L'Aquila’ Instead of giving clear advice about earthquake preparedness, as members of National Commission for Forecasting and Predicting Great Risks they simply tried to pacify the population, with the result that people died when the earthquake struck.

Meanwhile those who failed to predict the future of the US sub-prime mortgage market correctly, or used ill-understood mathematical models to predict the futures for them are still at large.

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