Nice to hear an optimistic viewpoint. I'm on the optimistic side of the seismology community, and I think the odds are against ever getting short-term prediction. I hope I'm wrong, and will work some on it from the side of the fundamentals of earthquake rupture.

Berkland is either ignorant of statistics or dishonest. I prefer to think the former. I've tested his best ideas with vastly greater care than he has, and they don't work. Not just don't they predict earthquakes in a helpful way, they have NO measureable power.

I read Whiteside's thesis, and there was nothing there. He also could not tell signal from noise. It really is not hard, but real tests were not in his thesis. Maybe he's done more, but GeoForecaster was a transparent scam with a useless-to-dishonest scoring system.

I know some believe in 103-degree rings, or CME correlations, ear tones, earthquake lights, tones on radios, thermal anomalies, lost pets, etc. None of this has been demonstrated by careful studies, nor have plausible physics been presented to show they are likely to work. Science has very sharp tools at its disposal, and telling a useful pattern from chance is usually simple once the pattern has been defined.

It is easy to say earthquake prediction is stalled because the scientists are incompetent (you knew him, did McEvilly strike you as a silly man? Does Jordan? The two of them set the tone for their day in how we proceed.) Nothing is stopping free enterprise, either. The rewards are tremendous. The problem is simple very difficult to intractable.