Glen: "He [Don]is doing very good with it[Lowell Whiteside's method], that is for sure."

Nothing is for sure. I agree with John Vidale's earlier post, that Don's prediction results might indicate a new knowledge, but also just might be chance. No way of knowing.

And I do still wonder why if the data/method belong to Lowell Whiteside, then what is the reluctance about obtaining Lowell's permission? According to the post of Chris, Lowell probably "wouldn't mind" his method being used. So why not just make it official?

And finally, I would ask Roger, are you now giving a Seal of Approval to Lowell Whiteside's method, as practiced by Don on this board? Do you disagree with appraisals such as that linked here?

Excerpt from link:
Terry E. Tullis
Brown University
Department of Geological Sciences

The results of our evaluation of the method of Whiteside and Ben-Zion (1995) indicate that the method is not a viable method of earthquake forecasting. The triggering reported is in fact not real and results from random chance. Comparisons of results generated with real data and with random data show virtually no difference. Furthermore, the temporal and spatial variation previously reported can be shown to result from variations in the numbers of earthquakes and consequent variations in the opportunities for apparent triggering by random chance. We have devised a triggering parameter that takes into account the opportunities for such random apparent triggering. We find that this triggering parameter is never significantly different from zero in any of the examples for which Whiteside and Ben-Zion (1995) suggested free-oscillation triggering occurred.

NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARY

We have evaluated a previously proposed earthquake prediction method and found that it does not work. The method envisioned that very small stresses associated with vibrations of the earth called free oscillations could cause small earthquakes to be triggered in areas where the stress was already high because the area was getting ready for a major earthquake. Several examples were presented that seemed to show that an unusually large number of small earthquakes were triggered before previous major earthquakes. Unfortunately, we have found that the apparent triggering was not real and was due merely to random chance.

• Appraisal of Lowell's Method