As I mentioned in a recent blog, six seismologists and a government official are on trail for manslaughter in Italy for failing to provide warning about an earthquake that killed several hundred people in the village of L'Aquila.
An article in today's New York Times offers an interesting commentary on how crisis communications can go wrong. According to the article, public concern was high because of a swarm of small earthquakes a local man's predictions a big earthquake based on his observations of radon gas release. Because of this high level of concern, the government called a meeting to discuss the earthquake risk. At this meeting the scientists did their job and provided accurate information: 1) it was possible but unlikely that the swarm of earthquakes they were concerned about might be precursors to a major quake and 2) given the history of seismic activity in L'Aquila, there is always a risk of an earthquake. However, when the government official provided this information at a press conference, he changed the message to, "There will be no earthquake."
The lesson here is deference to expertise. If you step outside your area of expertise, you risk miscommunicating the message. The media and the public can tell when you're talking about something about which you know very little and your credibility suffers. Instead, let your expert give the technical briefing and then follow-up as necessary with what you are doing about the situation. If you expert can also handle the issue (e.g. a public health director briefs on a problem and says what the public health department is doing about it), keep your mouth shut - it's about providing information from a trusted source, not your ego.
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