Petra,

That's about right. In other words, seismologists in general would not change their estimates of the risk of earthquakes in California much because of an M4.4 quake in Santa Barbara, except for the usual "watch out for aftershocks" warning within 10 or 20 km of its epicenter. We find some interesting (to us) trends, but none with useful predictive power.

Regarding ear tones, why would the 10Hz - 20KHz air vibrations that the ear can detect uniquely identify impending earthquakes in the days beforehand up to hundreds of km away? The foreshadowing humming is more noticeable than all the cars and trucks in LA, the wind going over the mountains, and the sea pounding the coast?

It's probably better not to start arguing over a mysterious mechanism; like Keilis-Borok's methods, it is surest way to check it out is just to document predictions ahead of time and see whether they happen.

John