Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
ernment official are being held responsible for the deaths of over three hun-
dred people in the earthquake that struck the city of L'Aquila in April 2009.
International seismologists have responded with outrage but also concern.
They admit to being hard-pressed to express their knowledge of seismic risk
in terms that the public will understand and act on.
19
Many of the scientists and engineers who began to worry about seismic
hazard in the 1970s had little hope of explaining the risk to the public.
Seismic risk was defined as a cost-benefit calculation to be made by seis-
mologists and engineers.
20
“The risk communication expert conceived of
the subject of environmental risk as needing to
know
conclusively, in order
to act, in order to divert panic.”
21
One of the first sociological studies of seis-
mic risk perception, published in 1982, set out from the assumption that
“public perceptions of seismic hazards rarely conform to
common sense.
”
The author, today one of the leading sociologists of environmental risk,
advocated “a vigorous public information and education campaign . . . that
eliminates the biases introduced when the public interprets information.”
22
But how can “common sense” be defined if not by means of public percep-
tions? In a similar vein, a Reaganite political scientist warned in 1978 that it
was impossible to fully “translate” seismology into lay terms. “The problem
of how to convert or translate scientific language into ordinary language is
fundamental. The assumption of the undertaking is that popular speech is
adequate for this translation. Yet, in making the translation, some of the
meaning is bound to be lost.” Seismologists were thus instructed to with-
hold information from the public in order to protect property values and
business interests. The danger was too great that the public would “misun-
derstand it.”
23
From this perspective, public communication is a form of
marketing, best left to nonscientists. According to a recent article on “out-
reach” in
Seismological Research Letters,
“Scientific data must be
translated
into meaningful information to be used by potential users, that is, they
must become
products.
”
24
As the sociologist Brian Wynne cautions, talk of translating science for
public consumption invites citizens to “sit back, and wait to be told what
they must do, rather than go out and learn as well as take their share of
responsibility for what could have been presented as a more complex, mul-
tidimensional and inherently indeterminate set of human problems, which
citizens and their representatives can and should help define.”25
25
“Transla-
tion” had been an operative concept in nineteenth-century seismology,
but it had nothing to do with diluting research for public consumption.
Scientists patiently translated instructions, questionnaires, and research re-
ports from one vernacular into another in order to enlist the participation of
