OK Glen, the more I think of this the more I think we have a semantics issue.

Lets say a predictor makes a circular prediction of some point in California, with a 1000 km radius, for a time frame of 365 days PST, and a magnitude of between 0.1 and 9.9.

After we all got done laughing, you would call it cheating, whatever that means. I would call it perfectly valid. I think it would be a useless prediction. You would probably agree.

This prediction meets all the requirements for a scientifically valid prediction. It has a time frame, and area, and a magnitude range. This is perfectly valid in the scientific world.

Here are the definitions I found for "Cheating":

1. To deceive by trickery; swindle:
2. To deprive by trickery; defraud:
3. To mislead; fool:
4. To elude; escape:

I assume you are applying definition #3, correct?

The problem I have is that if all the criteria for a valid scientific prediction are met, in other words time, place, and size, and are out in the open, in public, for everyone to see, how can this be viewed as misleading? Stupid, sure. Useless, of course. But misleading? I don't think so.

Now, if Joe Predictor posts a message here and says an eq that just happened in Japan fulfills his prediction, then you'd be getting into misleading in my opinion, but the prediction itself is certainly not.

A valid prediction, no matter how stupid, cannot be viewed as cheating. Maybe useless in our opinion, sure, but not cheating.

I think you may really mean to use “useless” rather than “cheating”, but please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. They are two totally different terms.