Can 200,000 Women Cause a Boobquake?

An anonymous reader writes "Purdue Senior Jennifer McCreight asked 30 of her friends to dress immodestly Monday to test a claim by an Iranian cleric that immodest women cause earthquakes. Now, over 200,000 women have joined the cause."

Comments

Yes

[Locke2005]

Yes, they can.

Re:Yes

[amplt1337]

Not statistically relevant. See analysis at her site.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks captain. Thought for a second the iranian cleric was right.

Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Pics, or it didn't happen.

is it just me or is there really an increase

[vxice]

just wondering aloud. I don't recall earthquakes being this prevalent. Or is this just a mental bias where I haven't paid much attention to earthquakes until recently. Having been in several I probably didn't care if they happened to someone else. I would write a script to crawl USGS data and calculate but I don't have my stat textbook on hand atm.

Re:is it just me or is there really an increase

[WrongMonkey]

No need to write a script, they've already compiled the data for you:

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/eqstats.php

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/graphs.php

Re:is it just me or is there really an increase

[Monkeedude1212]

With the advent of the internet, you can essentially report earthquakes world-wide rather quickly. I believe there was an XKCD comic that demonstrated if someone posted on twitter about an earthquake as fast as they could as soon as they felt it, people more than 100km out might read the tweet a few moments before it hits them. While not really practical as an alarm system, it shows the efficiency of the net, meaning that international support teams can be notified in minutes as opposed to multiple hours, or even days.

Since people have been shown to be more willing to donate to charities during a crisis, every possible crisis has been reported. Had the Earthquake in Haiti happened a few decades ago, I doubt it would have garnered much of a news report, perhaps a 20 second segment. Now that AID Agencies make enough to push airtime on the news about disasters, you'll be seeing a lot more of them.

But the real issue of the article is that some political figure in the Middle East is blaming Earthquakes on women wearing unflattering clothing. The idea of Boobquake was that women would wear scantily promiscuous clothing on April the 26th (and they did! What an amazing day) - to see if this would cause an Earthquake worth mentioning. Guess what? Nothing happened.

Better reporting and more people

[geek2k5]

I seem to recall that the 'increase' is caused by better reporting and a greater number of people that are affected by quakes. Today, with the Internet, an otherwise minor 4.0 in an 'earthquake free' area can be reported world wide in minutes

Re:Better reporting and more people

[Anonymous Coward]

I was curious about the number of quakes also, so I checked the USGS website

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/faq/?faqID=110

Re:Better reporting and more people

[CODiNE]

Let me ask you this, with a greater sharing of information and accuracy in detecting quakes how would we notice a genuine increase?

You see the quake question needs to be examined without the specter of religious interpretation hovering over it. With induced seismicity and several well known man-made quakes caused by buildings, dams, oil wells, etc... it is indeed a fact that there's more quakes in certain areas because of our own doing.

To simply say 'There's no increase' just to shut up the religious out there is harmful.

200,000? Try just one.

[c 0xFF]

Yo mamma so fat she causes a boobquake whenever she gets out of bed.

Re:200,000? Try just one.

[brainboyz]

That's not a boobquake, that's a flapquake. Quite different. Boobquakes are enjoyable.

Rigor

[zmaragdus]

I think they should go for statistical rigorousness with this one. You need a large sample size to invoke the "Law of Large Numbers." I am all in favor of additional boobquake days to help formulate a theory.

6.5? Not bad, not bad at all.

[FlameWise]

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Southeast_Taiwan_earthquake:

A 6.5 magnitude earthquake occurred on April 26, 2010 in the sea Southeast of Taiwan.

Re:6.5? Not bad, not bad at all.

[2obvious4u]

So were the 200,000 women in Taiwan? Don't you think a God would choose to have the quake target the people being indecent? Also there are earthquakes every single day.

Re:6.5? Not bad, not bad at all.

[Cryacin]

Maybe he's going after the people that didn't show cleavage? Maybe God is just a vengeful voyeur?!?

Re:6.5? Not bad, not bad at all.

[Anonymous Coward]

So were the 200,000 women in Taiwan? Don't you think a God would choose to have the quake target the people being indecent?

No. God's vengeance is indiscriminate.

Also there are earthquakes every single day.

And there are women showing cleavage every day. You aren't disproving anything.

Re:6.5? Not bad, not bad at all.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the same god that kills a random kitten everytime you masterbate and you expect him to care where he chooses to shake the ground?

This calls for a new Buddhist Koan

[Locke2005]

If double D's flap in the breeze and nobody sees them, do they still cause an earthquake?

O man the people who created math

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard weiners on chatroulette create ponies

This is research

[Hylandr]

This is research I would like to see more of!

- Dan.

I'm not sure, but...

[gestalt_n_pepper]

it would definitely rock *my* world. :)

Pictures?

[wisnoskij]

Where are the pictures of this scientifically interesting event?

Her Analysis of the Results

[Phrogman]

The originator of Boobquake, collected the results and posted an analysis on the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/apr/29/boobquake-earthquake-immodest-dress-iran#

Can 200,000 Women Cause a Headache?

[OneAhead]

There, fixed that for you.

You can't convince them that way

[CODiNE]

Every time a bunch of girls do this, they'll just get blamed for the NEXT earthquake wherever it is.

Source data search

[geek2k5]

We would have to go to the source data, as mentioned in the parent posting, to be absolutely sure. Even then, chances are that the data would only be useful for identifying a change in frequency of large earthquakes.

The following link to a USGS site provides some support to my comment: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/eqstats.php

It mentions that several million earthquakes hit each year, but most go undetected because they hit remote areas or are of small magnitude. It also mentions that as more seismographs are installed, worldwide, more earthquakes are being detected and located.

It then comments that large earthquakes, magnitude six and higher, have been relatively constant and it provides a link to a page titles 'Are Earthquakes Really on the Increase.'

Now, mankind induced earthquakes have been increasing in areas that have the activities you mentioned. But the magnitudes of those quakes tend to be small relative to the ones created by subduction zones and things like the San Andreas Fault system.