Mike and Roger,

Roger Musson does not share the same conclusion that the two of you do as I recall. Maybe it's because he used his own evaluation method for Dennis? But my general impression was that there was never any definite determination.

However, I think the two of you are looking at this differently than I may be. Even if his predictions were not better than chance he got hits on all of his predictions for two years straight and that's not so easy to do especially using a piece of home brew equipment as your method for prediction. I mean if it were fool proof and it was terribly easy to get those hits then he would have remained on top for forever and never have taken the downslide and quit.

This is the part about earthquake prediction that I find distasteful because if someone is doing something right, even if it isn't beyond random chance, it is still happening. He made predictions and he got hits. So if he could do it for that long and he wasn't a scientist then what's the commentary from the other side? Scientists say they can't predict earthquakes so they don't. But others are doing it and they do have results, so what's the problem?

Or should we say, "earthquakes are predictable" however, not necessarily useful. Statistics alone do not invalidate a successful prediction because there is no way to know if that particular earthquake would have ever occurred on it's own. Probabilities will say it might have, but cannot say it would have.

Looking at the past history of California statistically we should be having more 5.0M and 6.0M quakes on a routine basis, but for some reason we aren't. So if one is running the numbers and someone gets a 6.0 and you ran a catalog on it and maybe there were 20 6.0M quakes over the past years, but there weren't any for 5 years, does that mean it's worthless? No. And where are our 3.0 earthquakes that used to happen in the Bay Area every 18 days on average 8 years ago? I think we are going to be seeing a lot more cases occurring where the rubber meets the road. IE: As there haven't been very many 3.0 or better earthquakes throughout the state when they do occur they should have a greater value if predicted than at times when it was the norm.

While catalogs might be good overall, it's also a way to easily discredit someone when they are totally successful. This shouldn't be the case, but it is and it is slanted on the side in opposition of the predictors. Not fair is my way of seeing it. I'm sure many would disagree with me, but I do have a right to have my own opinion and I still believe that Dennis Gentry had a two year successful prediction run and I don't think anyone should demean it because statistics showed that something might have occurred anyway. Therefore the burden of truth sits on the side of the opposition to prove that in fact a quake would have happened there and if they knew it, then why didn't they predict it?

Petra