Hi All. As some of you already know geoForecasters has been prohibited from make earthquake predictions for California. The reason given is that they are not a licensed, certified California geologist. However there may be a bigger reason and it may not be with earthquake prediction itself, but in the way and how it is done. Take Care…Don in creepy town

The Bogeyman of Earthquake Prediction with Andrew Alden

“One of California's greatest geologists, Bailey Willis (1857–1949) led a vigorous public campaign in the 1920s to raise awareness of earthquake hazards and safe building practices. As president of the Seismological Society of America, he spoke out often. "It will be well for architects to respect His Majesty, the Earthquake, in making their designs," he wrote. And indeed, after the Santa Barbara quake of 29 June 1925 some cities enacted better building codes. But action was too slow for him, and within a year Willis went overboard, telling audiences that he expected a severe quake in Southern California within ten years, even five. Time magazine didn’t help by exaggerating even that claim.”

“The insurance industry grew concerned. Los Angeles real-estate promoters saw red. One of them, a prominent trustee at Caltech, warned his peers that if scientists would not "stop their talk about the earthquake problem I for one am going to see what I can do about stopping the whole seismological game." Soon a powerful builders' association discredited Willis on scientific grounds, triggering his public and professional humiliation. Willis withdrew from seismology, and progress in building codes was stalled until the 1933 Long Beach earthquake threatened the city's schoolchildren. Today, structural geologists still revere Willis as a founding father, but Stanford University, where he led the geology department, scarcely notes his tenure there now. (Much of my information on this episode comes from C.-H. Geschwind's California Earthquakes.)”

“Brian Brady was a researcher for the U.S. Bureau of Mines who in 1976 predicted that enormous offshore earthquakes would occur near Peru in 1981 and 1982. His work was based on laboratory experiments, and seismologists were deeply skeptical. Still, ordinary people and government officials were worried, and South American seismologists had to expend much effort to calm the flames. When the large foreshock he had predicted did not occur Brady withdrew the rest of his prediction, but a delegation of U.S. scientists still had to fly to South America to deal with the questions from the government and press. The research community was reminded again that just like earthquakes, false alarms can be dangerous.”

“Iben Browning was not a geologist at all but a retired biologist. Nevertheless, he issued a startling prediction: within two days of December 3, 1990, he said, there was a 50-50 chance that a magnitude-6.5 quake would strike the New Madrid region of Missouri. A remarkably energetic huckster, Browning raised such a public panic that businesses closed and schools in four states shut down during early December. Children and parents were needlessly alarmed, and much ink was spilled and scientists' time spent combating nonsense. Browning's theory of tidal forces has never had significant support from the data.”

The big lesson that geologists took from the Browning fiasco was that cranks must be counteracted swiftly and seriously. The other thing learned is that you test it and then retest it and test it again and then let others test it to see if they can reproduce the same thing and come to the same conclusions. Go to the public with some thing that hasn’t been proven and you run the risk of a premature death of a theory that while not perfect could with time be the one factor of many needed for earthquake prediction to become reality. It may not be something we agree with and in many ways hinders success. However that is the way it is. We can fight the system and get nowhere, or we can work with it and make great strides.

• The Bogeyman Of Earthquake Prediction