Witches in Jail

A proposed bill in Romania states that licensed witches could end up in jail if their predictions turned out to be false.

I know, curses!

But wait a second, what? If you have time, read through this super short report and after you’re done fretting over how the Romanian government officials are going to fight off the spells that are currently being placed on them, let’s take a second and think about this.

And yes, Professor Trelawney would be totally done for.

But, should this law also apply to weatherman? Sports announcers? Advisors? Marketing consultants? Why or why not?

Should a sports announcer be punished if her projections of the game outcome didn’t come true? Should a weatherman go to jail if his predictions turned out to be false? Or if a consultant’s advice turned out to be useless?

(If you are arguing that witchcraft isn’t scientific, here’s an interesting link that might redefine scientific)

I am assuming that the results do not cause harm to any parties, and if you still say yes to any of those above questions, what if the people willingly paid you to “help” them? They are in a way signing up for this and should understand the risk themselves. Sure, you can still say that witchcraft isn’t rigorously proven scientifically, but some people sincerely believe in it, and last time I checked, sports announcers don’t deliver 100% of their promises and they don’t end up in Azkaban for it (and we certainly can’t exclude the possibility of people lying about their birthdays to try to mess the witchcraft up).

I think the ideal situation is for the witches to spell out exactly what the risks are (no pun intended), but that would be like giving themselves a repelling jinx for customers – certainly bad for business. I don’t think their method of dumping poisonous mandrake is an effective method to change anything, and I understand the need to stop harmful superstitions. But I really don’t think people should go to jail for something like this if everything stays harmless. If the Romanian government is doing this because it wants to present a positive image to the rest of the world, they should look for other methods.