I feel that although these statistical evaluations of Shan's data are quite valuable, regardless of their outcome I still personally suspect that his forecasting method can produce good and important results.

Something that I have proposed repeatedly in the past is the fact that at this time every forecaster is responsible for developing his or her own method and demonstrating that it works etc. That is part of the politics of forecasting earthquakes. And Shan does not appear to me to be presently presenting his results and methodology in such a manner that they automatically and conclusively prove that his method works. That is part of the reason that I have been trying for some time to help with getting his procedure evaluated.

Why do all that work?

If you purchase a single lottery ticket you need to realize that your chances of winning are extremely small. Yet in spite of that people purchase them all the time. They know that if they win then they will probably be in much better financial shape. But if they don't purchase a ticket they have no chance of winning. So they take a small gamble in the hopes of a great reward.

Shan's procedure appears to me to be so attractive because of its simplicity and very low cost. If it can be made to work then it might provide people living in remote areas of impoverished nations with a way of forecasting their local destructive earthquakes and getting out of their way. And as that recent earthquake in Iran probably demonstrated, at the moment many people around the world appear to have relatively little hope of surviving a powerful earthquake.

So the idea here is to make a small investment of research time and energy in the hopes of accomplishing something significant.