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06-07-2015, 04:52 AM
OK. It took me long enough but I finally got around to reading this paper.
It was interesting, but also troubling.
There were two aspects discussed. First was animal behavior as monitored by triggered wildlife cameras. Second was VLF anomalies.
I'm quite dubious about the animal behavior claim in this paper due to the distances involved. By the paper's own admission the animal study site was over 320km from the quake epicenter. I don't dispute the animal behavior analysis, but I struggle to accept that animal behavior this far away could be linked as a precursor to the quake. To give an idea of what this distance means, it would have been like studying animals in Reno, NV and linking their behavior to the 1989 Loma Prieta quake. It's about the same distance for a similar sized quake. For Duffy, that's about the distance from London to Paris.
Regarding the VLF claims, my response is mixed. Again, I don't dispute the analysis of the VLF data. But the proposed explanation I find myself divided on. Basically the claim is that positive charge carriers are formed deep underground which work their way to the surface. These charges affect the ground environment thus affecting animal behavior. Further, these charges then also migrate up the atmosphere column and affect the ionosphere.
As for the positive charge carrier explanation, I'm mostly OK with it. It's not dissimilar to how semiconductor electronics work which I am familiar with. However, the explanation of how those charges then migrate to the ionosphere left me wanting. It wasn't so much the explanation itself, but the references. In this part of the article all the references were to papers by Freund. Somehow, finding so many references to other articles by the same author as the article you're reading seems a bit tautological to me. "I claim X to be true." "Cite please?" "My previous papers." Not enough peer review.
Finally, something completely lacking from the paper was any self critique. Is it not normal for a scientific paper to end by discussion of known issues with the proposed theory and how it may be resolved? I even see that in many of the Scientific American articles I read. But there was nothing in this paper like that at all. I reminds me of confirmation bias.
There may in fact be merit to these ideas, and further research may be warranted. But the flavor of this paper kind of leaves me with a bad aftertaste.
Brian
It was interesting, but also troubling.
There were two aspects discussed. First was animal behavior as monitored by triggered wildlife cameras. Second was VLF anomalies.
I'm quite dubious about the animal behavior claim in this paper due to the distances involved. By the paper's own admission the animal study site was over 320km from the quake epicenter. I don't dispute the animal behavior analysis, but I struggle to accept that animal behavior this far away could be linked as a precursor to the quake. To give an idea of what this distance means, it would have been like studying animals in Reno, NV and linking their behavior to the 1989 Loma Prieta quake. It's about the same distance for a similar sized quake. For Duffy, that's about the distance from London to Paris.
Regarding the VLF claims, my response is mixed. Again, I don't dispute the analysis of the VLF data. But the proposed explanation I find myself divided on. Basically the claim is that positive charge carriers are formed deep underground which work their way to the surface. These charges affect the ground environment thus affecting animal behavior. Further, these charges then also migrate up the atmosphere column and affect the ionosphere.
As for the positive charge carrier explanation, I'm mostly OK with it. It's not dissimilar to how semiconductor electronics work which I am familiar with. However, the explanation of how those charges then migrate to the ionosphere left me wanting. It wasn't so much the explanation itself, but the references. In this part of the article all the references were to papers by Freund. Somehow, finding so many references to other articles by the same author as the article you're reading seems a bit tautological to me. "I claim X to be true." "Cite please?" "My previous papers." Not enough peer review.
Finally, something completely lacking from the paper was any self critique. Is it not normal for a scientific paper to end by discussion of known issues with the proposed theory and how it may be resolved? I even see that in many of the Scientific American articles I read. But there was nothing in this paper like that at all. I reminds me of confirmation bias.
There may in fact be merit to these ideas, and further research may be warranted. But the flavor of this paper kind of leaves me with a bad aftertaste.
Brian