"Today, a court in the central Italian city of L'Aquila .... sentenced six scientists and a government bureaucrat to six years in jail on manslaughter charges for their failure to predict a 2009 earthquake that left more than 300 people dead.
... The seven convicted men stood accused of "inexact, incomplete, and contradictory" information about the risks posed by tremors in the weeks ahead of the April 6, 2009, earthquake that caused so much destruction.
The seven, all members of the "National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks," were convicted after an apparently emotional trial in which the testimony of people who had lost loved ones were allowed, as if it was relevant to the question of whether current science can predict earthquakes. No grief, no matter how great, can answer that question (which is a resounding "no," by the way).
The scientific consensus has been clear on this for some time. As much as the world would like the ability to predict earthquakes, it's eluded the best efforts of scientists for decades. The plate-tectonic revolution in geology held out some hope for greater predictive abilities as it gathered steam in the 1950s and 1960s. But while scientists have a much better understanding of why earthquakes happen and where they're likely to occur than at any point in human history, their predictive powers are so vague as to be practically useless – beyond recommending people shouldn't live in quake zones like L'Aquila. People are generally resistant to such advice though.
The city was rebuilt after major earthquakes in the 15th and 18th centuries, just as it has been rebuilt now."
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Backchannels/2012/1022/Earthquake-predictions-and-a-triumph-of-scientific-illiteracy-in-an-Italian-court