OK guys and Gals, I'm done for a while...until I see the next error. Taking the next 2 days off....have a family and want to keep it that way...

Dec 28, 2004,

Dear Public Editor, Daniel Okrent,
cc nytnews

Before I get to the errors in yesterday's New York Times, that were not corrected in today's Times, I'll mention a larger issue: the general poor science reporting that I have seen not only in your paper, but on CNN. CNN is using meteorologists to explain earthquakes and tsunamis and even 26 hours after the quake they had it completely and totally wrong. To get more detail on that, and why it is important and to see your own errors on-line discussed, look for my alias, "chris in suburbia", at:
http://www.earthwaves.org/wwwboard/wwwboard.html

To establish my credibility: I am a project research geologist at the University of California Santa Barbara, have a Ph.D. and am a California Registered Geologist. I work on active faults using geophysical techniques, have taken a graduate course in Physical Oceanography, and am about one class short of being a meteorologist.

OK: the errors: Concerning the map on the front page of Monday's paper: I am at least 95% confident that the travel times for the tsunami are too fast by about 50%.....it should take 9 hours, not 6 hours to reach Somalia. As a news organization, it should be very easy for you to check the actual arrival times-I'd appreciate your emailing me this information. For TV news, this would not be academic...it could have been life-saving for people in resorts watching CNN, for example, to have seen an accurate map. They probably saw no map. See my posts on earthwaves to directions to an accurate map. The French news Monday night (channel 2 in France, shown on Channel 25 in N.Y.), had a travel-time map that looked correct.

Your map on page A11 was wrong for #1.....I don't think there was any such earthquake.....at least it is not on the NEIC page :
http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/bulletin/bulletin.html

Your 3D block diagram, while infinitely better than what CNN was doing Sunday night, is misleading, and probably also in error. I think the plate boundary would be deeper at the epicenter...which is the point where the quake started. But, you, like everyone I have seen, miss the point...the area of the fault broken by the quake may be 1000 km or even longer, and could be 100 or 200 km wide. So, a particular depth has no meaning....the range of depths where the fault broke has meaning.

So, given that this is a paper that appeared a day and a half after the quake, you could make use of qualified geoscientists to get this right. I have not read today's coverage in your paper yet, beyond looking at the list of errors.

I would be happy to discuss this with someone, but our phone is not working until late tomorrow, and I will not be checking email until Thursday night...

Christopher Sorlien