Abstract A key aspect of ethics is the concept of responsible behaviour, that is, the attitude of correcting one’s own actions based on the foreseen effects. In the case of Earth scientists, these actions mainly concern providing and communicating authoritative statements that are the basis of activities devoted to prevent possible losses. When deterministic statements are provided, science and scientists are imputable for any wrong action that relies on these statements. Probabilistic statements, instead, imply the possibility of alternative scenarios characterized by a degree of belief assessed based on the available knowledge. In this case, the lack of any definitive ‘truth’ requires the responsibility of a relevant decider to choose among several possibilities. Correctly communicating case by case the actual nature (deterministic or probabilistic) of the scientific statements becomes of paramount importance to manage effectively the relationship between the scientific community and society. The adoption of an epistemic view of probability and the use of clear decision-making tools may be of great help in providing a more effective basis for translating probabilistic statements into a comprehensible language and may also clarify the respective role of scientists and society in facing geological risks.

The indentation of Arabia has influenced the post-Oligocene evolution of the eastern Mediterranean–European region, from Anatolia to the Carpathians and even the central Mediterranean area, since the late Miocene. The efficient transmission of compressional stress from the Arabia-Eurasia collision zone into such a broad area was facilitated by the Tethyan orogenic belt, developed during the Late Cretaceous–Paleogene closure of the northern Neotethyan Ocean, and in particular by its strong inner metamorphic core. The lateral displacement of this orogenic belt, due to the push of Arabia, was progressively accommodated by bowing and extrusion of those sectors that faced low-buoyancy lithospheric domains. This extrusion process first involved the outward expulsion of the Carpathian arc at the expense of the low-buoyancy Magura oceanic domain, and then the lateral escape of the Cycladic arc at the expense of the low-buoyancy Ionian-Levantine oceanic domain. The lateral migration of the Tethyan orogenic belt began to influence the deformation pattern of the central Mediterranean region around the late Miocene, when its Cycladic-Pelagonian sector welded into the southern Adriatic continental domain. Under the westward push of the Tethyan belt, the Adria plate decoupled from Africa and from its Padanian protuberance and rotated clockwise at the expense of the western Apulian low-buoyancy zone. The available geological evidence in the study area suggests that volcanic activity was spatially associated with extension in the upper crust. We discuss the possible implications of this inferred geodynamic connection between the Arabian indentation and regional deformation patterns for the temporal evolution of deep tectonic processes in the central–eastern Mediterranean.