© Peri - Percossi/EPAHundreds attend the state funeral ceremony for victims of the April 6, 2009 earthquake, at piazza d'Armi in L'Aquila, Abruzzo, central Italy.
Earthquake prediction can be a grave, and faulty science, and in the case of Italian seismologists who are being tried for the manslaughter of the people who died in the 2009
L'Aquila quake, it can have legal consequences.
The group of seven, including six seismologists and a government official, reportedly didn't alert the public ahead of time of the risk of the L'Aquila earthquake, which occurred on April 6 of that year, killing around 300 people, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
But most scientists would agree it's not their fault they couldn't predict the wrath of Mother Nature.
"We're not
able to predict earthquakes very well at all," John Vidale, a Washington State seismologist and professor at the University of Washington, told LiveScience.
Even though advances have been made, the day scientists are able to forecast earthquakes is still "far away," Dimitar Ouzounov, a professor of earth sciences at Chapman University in California, said this month regarding the prediction of the
March 11 earthquake in Japan.
Comment: More U.S. Soldiers Killed Themselves Than Died in Combat in 2010