I don't think this constitutes a "celebration of science" at all, but an unreasonable expectation that scientists must always be correct in their predictions. People want absolutes. Yes or no. And reality doesn't often fall into such easy categories.
I'm also not sure how a panel can "force" a politician into saying anything other than what that politician wants to say. Dissenters should have been louder and on the record, but a politician is the wrong person to present the data.
"God" has no place in this discussion, unless you want to start talking about "Acts of God" as they pertain to insurance. Also, where's the evidence that small tremors lead to big quakes? Last I checked, and I live with a geologist/volcanologist, there isn't any. Does that mean they're definitively not linked? Of course not.
The general public's misconceptions about probability also factor. Just because a quake occurs today doesn't mean the probability of their being a quake tomorrow drops, yet some people live with the belief that it does.
Flip a coin, and below a certain threshold number of tosses, one side or the other will seem to come up slightly more than the other, but the chance of either side coming up is still 50%. We can grasp that, but extend that to life or death situations and people forget.