Five Italian officials have resigned in protest over the convictions of seven Italian scientists on manslaughter charges stemming from a 2009 earthquake that killed 309 people in central Italy.
In a bizarre story that could have come out of the pages of The Onion, Italian courts charged that the scientists did not provide adequate or insistent enough warning to the residents of L'Aquila, an earthquake-prone region, before the 6.3 magnitude quake hit three years ago.
The charges were based on a report the scientists authored stating that they could not determine whether the small tremors the area was experiencing would be followed by a large quake.
Scientists and experts around the world have condemned the convictions, pointing out that no one can actually predict an earthquake.
"To predict a large quake on the basis of a relatively commonplace sequence of small earthquakes, and to advise the local population to flee would constitute both bad science and bad public policy," said David Oglesby, associate professor of earth sciences at the University of California, Riverside, speaking to Russia Today.
Luciano Maiani and four other officials resigned from Italy's "Great Risks Commission" and Department of Civil Protection after the guilty verdict and six-year sentences were handed down.
The scientists will appeal, and will likely remain free until their cases are settled.
While no reputable official, organization or scientist supports the convictions, public outrage over the deaths in the quake is still high in L'Aquila.
Homes, businesses and hospitals still haven't been rebuilt, and no one has been held responsible for shoddy construction practices in the area that resulted in more damage and death than might have occurred otherwise.
The respected scientific journal Nature weighed in, saying, "The verdict is perverse and the sentence ludicrous. Already some scientists have responded with warnings about the chilling effect on their ability to serve in public risk assessments."