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Web Site Selling "Earthquake Forecasts"
waytoomuchcoffee writes "The San Francisco Chronicle is running a story on geoForecaster.com, a site that offers 'earthquake forecasts,' for a fee. California is looking into claims that the site is practicing geology without a license."
Damn those SCSI drives know how to vibrate
California is looking into claims that the site is practicing geology without a license. If you let people practice geology without a license, The terrorists have already won.
Sounds like typical snake oil salesmen to me. But I wonder, why on earth do you need a license to practice geology?
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
I forecast that this company will go out of business at 2.5 on the Enron scale.
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
"practicing geology without a license"?!? Does that mean that the local rock & mineral club, of which I'm a member, could be violating laws when we go out and study the local terrain, searching for specimens?
I'm glad I don't live in California. I'd hate to learn that my checking the webicorders could be illegal.
Lemon curry?
Is that a joke or what, I am astounded that there is a law against someone "practicing geology without a license", I'm interested, what does it take to get a "geology license", how much does it cost? What if someone in japan hosted a site predicting earthquakes in california, what then? This whole thing seems rather bizarre to me.
I would expect such blatant racism on Fark, but on Slashdot? Mods please ban this asshole.
Be sure to send me your credit card information so you can be billed the $9.95 you owe me for this information.
Unfortunately, the reality is increasingly that many in the scientific profession achieve success by attracting public attention, the public often being a poor judge of true innovation. Why? Because if you aren't making wild claims, CNN just doesn't care, and how does a Professor that has made a genuine contribution to their field compete with an idiot that is on CNN every second day?
There are those that have made a career out of telling the media what they want to hear. People who gladly accept publicity even when their self-aggrandization hurts serious research in their field.
For the perfect example, learn a little about the career of Kevin Warwick, the UK's foremost pseudo-scientist.
Science and academia are increasingly a joke. For some time now, it has been more about public image than genuine contribution to the human understanding of the world around them.
slashdot.org has received a warning from regulators who have alleged that the service is a sham and amounts to wilful Denial Of Service attacks.
That's like living in Vancouver or Seattle and paying for a weather forcast that tells you it's going to rain.
Sounds like this is geared more towards professional geologists than amateurs.
My dog got freaky one day and hid under my desk for no apparent reason. Later, there was a small earthquake. Ever since, I've been issuing 'Brown Alerts' (her fur is brown) whenever she hides under the desk.
I didn't realize that her lack of a license was a reason to discredit her. *sigh* I'm really disappointed.
I'm skeptical, but it seems to me as if they've made it easy to test the accuracy of their claims. All we need is for one person to subscribe to their service, record all of their predictions for a few weeks, then compare it to public earthquake data from USGS.
Be sure to check that they don't change any of their data after the fact - i.e. that their archive of past forecasts really does match what they predicted. Also, make sure that the "updates" they make to each forecast aren't too dramatic - if the forecast says that there'll be an earthquake here in one week, but tomorrow the forecast says it will actually be 300 miles away from here, then it's a lot less useful as a resource.
Reading through their site, they certainly don't show many of the typical warning signs of a scam. Sure, it would be nice if they published their methodology, but it doesn't really matter. We can test the accuracy of their system as a "black box" without their cooperation, simply by comparing their forecasts to reality.
That said, here are my main concerns:
1. They claim 90% accuracy of earthquakes magnitude 6.5 and higher. Their sample period is three years - how many 6.5+ earthquakes have there been since 2000? Also, does this mean that of all earthquakes that did happen, they predicted them with 90% accuracy, or that of the earthquakes they forecast, they were 90% accurate? With the latter interpretation, they wouldn't be penalized for earthquakes they didn't forecast at all.
2. They give themselves a near-perfect score if they underestimate the magnitude of an earthquake. Is this reasonable? Should they get credit for forecasting a 2.5-3.5 earthquake if a 5.5 hits? Or a 7.5?
3. After the first time they forecast an event (up to a year in advance!) they update their prediction daily. After the predicted time window has passed, do they score themselves based on the most recent prediction, or based on the first prediction? One could imagine that their methodology really does work - but only two days in advance. To make it seem like they can predict much farther in advance, they just make up random predictions and update them daily, changing the closest random prediction two days before a "real" prediction says an event will occur.
They "predict" a couple and then they use their secretly hidden devices to cause them.
Remember that "earthquake swarm" in San Ramon (a town of burb claves just over the hills from SanFran/Oakland)??? I think it made national news (my dad in New England rang me about it)...
Perhaps that was their testing of their "prediction" scheme.
So they predict a few, then the maybe "predict" an 8.5 for San Francisco if they don't pony up perhaps Venture Capital.
"Maybe you're safe, see? Or maybe there's an earthquake coming to your mudda's house. Or your kid's school, see? So let's see some investment here or we'll predict the penninsula back to orchards"
Have you ever tried talking to a reporter about something vaguely scientific? I agree with you that there are people in the public eye who make a living out of hyping up the media, but I tend to disagree with a lot of what you've said.
As someone who's had to talk to the media on several occasions about scientific subjects, I can say with some certainty that with very few exceptions, the media does everything they possibly can to sensationalise whatever information you give it. They can and do chop and change whatever you might say to put whatever spin they want to put on it, and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. Welcome to capitalism, where populist media determines public opinion.
I've seen lots of friends get caught out by this. It's easy to read people quoted in the paper as saying something, and assume they were stupid to say it. In actuality it's much more likely that the reporter's chopped out every second word and rearranged some sentances to get a desired effect as well as completely and absolutely ignoring the 95% of your conversation where you stressed that whatever you said was excessively unlikely. They will have done just enough to have quoted you completely out of context, but stopped mind numbingly short of mis-quoting altogether.
But do you really want just anyone doing geological assays for construction projects? Is that an area in which you want to say "Fuck it, caveat emptor?"
In that light, it doesn't seem at all ridiculous to license geologists. Not that selling earthquake predictions should necessarily be illegal (aside from existing laws against fraud), but maybe the state is just trying to raise awareness of the difference between a licensed geologist and Joe Shmoe with a rock collection. (Similar to nurses' unions pointing out that a "nurse practitioner" is not held to the same standards as a registered nurse.)
Quit it with the anti-California rhetoric already.
The majority of US states regulate their geologists (Washington isn't on this list, but Washington hardly regulates anything).
Do any states register geologists?
Yes. Twenty-six states now have registration or certification laws: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Puerto Rico also has passed a registration law.
California has more geologic activity in it's little pinky then most states have in their whole territory. Regulation and strict building standards is why over 30-million Californians can survive in Earthquake, flood & landslide country. The potential for fraud is enormous. As a homeowner, I'm glad for the regulation.
In 1989, a 7.1 earthquake in the SF Bay Area killed 62 people.
By contrast, in 1999 a 7.4 earthquake hit Turkey, killing over 30,000 people. Turkey has regulation, but doesn't enforce it.
Yes, their are many factors involved in these two numbers, but regulation saved many lives in 1989.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."