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128.112.22.28 was me. Ulixes 23:59, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
I am tagging this article as "unbalanced" in that it gives VAN more status than warranted. An indication of this is that the eight items under "Further reading" are all by Varotsos and colleagues (and the usefulness of some these doubtful). Recent edits by 134.139.204.63 suggest an attempt to rehabilitate VAN based on a new book; there is no comment on the book, or why it changes the criticisms made of VAN in the 1990s. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) ( talk) 19:17, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
As WP:BALANCE requires treatment in proportion to the weight of the sources, and most sources challenge the validity of the VAN method, I propose the lead be rewritten as folloows:
Notes:
If there are no objections I will dig out the missing reference(s), and make this revision. Caveat: I prefer all the references in a References section, linked by {{ harv}} short-cites, as it really is easier. But I haven't decided if I want to pull out all the citations and convert to harv, or just dump my references into the refs. Anyone else have any strong preferences here? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) ( talk) 21:59, 12 May 2013 (UTC)
I am a bit dismayed by your repeated reference to "anti-VAN" sources; it seems to me that you do have a bit of inclination here. That the "VAN method" is controverted is a fact; to state that Varotsos et al. claim successes without mentioning that those claims are controverted would amount to promotion of VAN. My proposed text is very simple: it states 1) the claim that the VAN method successfully predicts earthquakes, 2) that this has been criticized, and 3) the finding of the ICEFCP, which as close as we can get (so far) to settling the matter. I believe that is reasonably balanced. (For the missing "pro-VAN" references I have in mind one or two of the early VAN papers, and the editor's introduction to the TP issue.) If there is unbalance in this it is in giving VAN equal weight whereas NPOV (specifically, WP:WEIGHT) requires proportionality. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) ( talk) 00:03, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
I believe that the VAN team have never published circuit diagrams of the SES front end, which critics claim that may respond to industrial frequency and RF signals. I have only seen a set of block diagrams of the front end, without specific details (K. Nomikos: "The telemetric of VAN group", A Critical Review of VAN, 1996). Even the ICs used in the front end are not listed. I don't know of any evaluation of EMC performance of the front end by an independent laboratory. This lack of information reduces the credibility of the method and allows opponents to publish claims about TV signals, military UHF repeaters, etc. Has anyone seen a detailed description of the analog part of the VAN system ? SV1XV ( talk) 07:13, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
I believe this section is too technical and esoteric. I would delete most of the material and replace it with the following, much simpler version:
If this deletion is accepted, we could even delete the separate section and move the remaining text into "Description of VAN". SV1XV ( talk) 15:52, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
Regarding natural time analysis -- I haven't seen any criticism of it. I'm not an expert! Their method does seem legitimate -- simply signal filtering, with some terms introduced to give weight to the ordering of events. This kind of work is empirical -- if they get results, then it's acceptable. I'm concerned that some of the criticism of their earlier method was directed at their catalog of seismic events. They may have been leaving some earthquake data out deliberately -- at least that was the implication of some of the criticism. Or, they may just have taken seismic data from one source and not another. None of their work has been retracted, as far as I know. The criticism might be unfounded. In the Springer book they did include a set of seismic events they predicted between 2001 and 2010, and it wouldn't be that hard to see whether they have left out any. I think mostly their work has been ignored. Again, I do like the fact that they are trying to do something. Natural time -- that's just their way of saying time series analysis. There's nothing particularly controversial about it, other than their choice of language, as far as I can tell. It's just data analysis, looking for criticality in the data. Mostly they like to have their filtered data with values between zero and one, so that the numbers get smaller when they are multiplied together, and you can pick out changes or set different critical thresholds easily. Thanks for the link to their work. BTW, some of their articles have the term "entropy" -- and this term has nothing to do with thermodynamic entropy. They've just constructed an equation to look at variance in the data (similar to their kappa term) and picked "entropy." A confusing choice of nomenclature. Daniel Helman ( talk) 04:55, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
I looked at a little of the "natural time" material, and it looks like junk. (Just window dressing to burnish the discredited SES selection process.) Varotsos also claims that it can identify cardiac patients at risk of sudden death, but Google search results suggest he is being ignored by the medical community. I think there is a strong case for this being a WP:fringe theory, which should be clearly identified as such. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) ( talk) 23:17, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
Currently all of the "references" (full citations) seem to be setup in cite templates, but in each individual footnote. I am thinking of pulling them all out and putting them in a real "References" section (not just a spot for {{ reflist}}) because this is easier. But there are some other complications, like then I would have to put short cites in the text/notes. Comments? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) ( talk) 22:28, 25 May 2013 (UTC)
Did it. Replaced full references in the text with Harv short cites. (Some of these could use page specifications.) Corrected some errors and augmented the references, put them in alpahabetical order in "References". ~ J. Johnson (JJ) ( talk) 23:38, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
I propose removing the "primary sources" tag that asks for secondary or tertiary sources to be added. The statement is true, but the reality is that essentially there are no secondary or tertiary sources on this topic (Wikipedia leads the pack!) except for the Mary Lazaridou-Varotsos book, which is seriously COI. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) ( talk) 22:29, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
Anyone else think that some of the text for the bullet points rambles and is unclear? I think each point should be rewritten for style. I'll do it if I can get around to it -- very busy right now. :) Daniel Helman ( talk) 22:41, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
Scientific articles critical of VAN in chronological order, with summaries.
My short-form naming scheme (optional!) is straight forward: author(s), year (yy), a code for the journal, volume. In some cases page number (opt.) follows an underscore.
= Special issue of Geophysical Research Letters:
= In the Lighthill volume:
= Subsequent:
‡ Indicates a non-primary source.
Tentative listing of main criticisms (extracted from above).
(What follows is comments from Daniel Helman) -- You have put in a huge amount of effort into this. It is wonderful! Here are some comments -- I'd like to assert that * Papadopoulos10-eos91 was written in bad faith. The text of the note is here: Uyeda and Kamogawa [2008] reported on the VAN experimental method for short-term earthquake prediction (VAN was named for three Greek physicists, Panayiotis Varotsos, Kessar Alexopoulos, and Konstantine Nomicos), which reportedly recorded seismic electric signals (SESs) before the Mw 6.8 earthquake on 14 February 2008. They claimed that a prediction is documented by P. A. Varotsos et al. (Seismic electric signals and 1/f “noise” in natural time, version 3, 2008; available at http://arxiv.org/abs/0711.3766v3) and in the newspaper Ethnos (10 February 2008; http://www.ethnos.gr/article.asp?catid=11424&subid2&tag=8777&pubid=444473). This claim is unjustified because the prediction was not submitted to Greece's Permanent Special Scientific Committee for the Assessment of Seismic Hazard and the Evaluation of Seismic Risk. According to Greek legislation, the committee is officially charged with analyzing and vetting earthquake hazard assessments (including predictions and ongoing seismic crises) and ultimately advising the government. Through civil protection authorities, the government handles the social, economic, and other negative consequences of impending earthquakes. But perhaps more scientifically grievous, this prediction was not documented elsewhere beforehand.
And a rebuttal is here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2010EO180004/abstract "We welcome the critical comments of Papadopoulos [2010]. We must point out, however, that most of them are incorrect.
First, on 1 February 2008, P. A. Varotsos et al. (Seismic electric signals and 1/f “noise” in natural time, version 3, 2008; available at http://arxiv.org/abs/0711.3766v3) did document the seismic electric signal (SES) activity for the M 6—class earthquake, recorded at station PIR (one of the SES measuring stations located close to Pirgos city in western Greece) on 14 January 2008, and assigned the epicentral area (approximately 250 × 250 kilometers). Two weeks after the documentation, the Mw 6.9 Greek earthquake in question occurred, on 14 February 2008. As to the occurrence time of this earthquake, the newspaper Ethnos on 10 February 2008 ( http://www.ethnos.gr/article.asp?catid=11424&subid2&tag=8777&pubid=444473) reported it as “imminent.” Second, we did not mention two relatively small Patras shocks on 4 February 2008 simply because VAN also documented them (P. A. Varotsos et al., 2008, version 3) based on separate SES activity recorded on 10 January 2008 at Patras."
To continue: Papadopoulos ought to have known that Varotsos et al. are barred from reporting their results directly to Greece's Committee for the Assessment of Earthquake Hazard, and therefore his note is disingenuous. That's not to say that the updated VAN method has been confirmed -- just that Papadopoulos' note is particularly odd.
Most of the criticisms in the above list refer to the VAN method before time series analysis. I see the three outstanding criticisms of the VAN method as: (1) The origin of purported SES is hard to confirm. Many may be spurious. (2) The method has not been tested by scientists outside of Greece and Japan. Uyeda seems to be working closely with Vartosos et al. (3) False alarms endanger the public, and more care ought to be taken in issuing claims.
Let me run down the list of major criticisms, and add two cents to each:
In general, I think what distinguishes a "major" criticism from minor criticisms is its usefulness to scientific understanding. I would class the following as minor criticisms, as they are explained by the empirical nature of prediction:
I would class the following as mean-spirited, and not even "minor" in nature, but, instead, untrue:
I would class the following as no longer true of the VAN method, since they revised it in 2001 to include time series analysis:
(1) Though they outline a few methods for distinguishing artificial from genuine signals in the Springer book, these still need to be verified extensively, especially if the method is to be used in other metropolitan areas, like Los Angeles. (2) Selective sensitivity of stations is based on correlation of electric signals with seismic events. There are some examples from the book of artificial seismic events (blasting) producing electric signals. A standard protocol should be devised so that a specified number of artificial events can be used to constrain how likely the correlations of natural seismic events are with the purported SES. (3) Generation is still an issue, but newer papers are extant, such as those by Freund, and these look at mechanisms. I don't find a criticism saying "it's physically impossible" to be good science. One must fit the analysis to the observed data, and not the other way around. (4) Transmission is still an issue, but faults are much more electrically conductive than the surrounding rock, and articles have been published showing transmission is possible. Again, I don't find the criticism saying "it's physically impossible" to be good science. If one model is wrong, then one looks for another to explain the phenomena.
This leaves the following as major criticisms of the VAN method, with an emphasis on the origin and transmission of SES:
And the following as major criticisms of the VAN method, with an emphasis on their methodology:
Let me know what you think of what I've written, above? And do you agree that these are the general categories of the major criticisms of the VAN method? (1) The origin of purported SES is hard to confirm. Many may be spurious. (2) The method has not been tested by scientists outside of Greece and Japan. (3) False alarms endanger the public, and more care ought to be taken in issuing claims. Daniel Helman ( talk) 21:20, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
I have tagged the article as non-neutral. A series of edits on 6 May (starting here) from an IP address geolocated to the University of Athens (home of VAN) generally blunted or removed criticism, while adding comments that these have been "refuted by VAN" (etc.). The general trend is to soften or remove criticism, and promote the views of VAN. I rolled back those edits, but they were largely restored by 77.69.86.91 (geolocated to an Athens suburb). The same IP did a similar series of edits about VAN at Earthquake prediction, which I have discussed in detail at Talk:Earthquake prediction#Re 195.134.89.153's VAN edits. (S/he also tagged the section on the VAN predictions with neutrality, but has not provided any discussion.)
Hard to say what should be done, as this article really needs a deep review, and revision. But no where near the top of my priorities. If anyone with some familiarity with the field (and access to a good university library) wants a challenging summer project, this would be a good time to speak up. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) ( talk) 22:45, 22 May 2016 (UTC)
I have no idea what you mean by "someone should have protected the article from neutrality
", but I will point to several specific "neutrality issues" with your edits.
1) In your edits of 6 May 2016, the first one (at 10:35) was an extended description of "natural time analysis". While Google Scholar shows a number of papers on that, it seems that most of them involve one or more of "P Varotsos, NV Sarlis, ES Skorda" - i.e., the original authors. I do not see (nor have you shown) any general acceptance of this concept, so this edit appears to be undue promotion of a theory with little support or use in mainstream science, amounting to questionable science that borders on being fringe.
2) In your
edit of 10:58 you removed an important fact, that "Currently, the major criticism of the VAN method is that results have not yet been replicated by scientists outside specific research groups in Greece and Japan.
"
3) At
11:48 ("balancing by including the corresponding replies to the criticism") you replaced a detailed examination of a VAN claim of "one-to-one correlation between SESs and earthquake
" with "the correlation between SESs and earthquakes was later criticized ....
"
4) At
13:54 you replaced "the VAN group issued a series of telegrams in the 1980s, warning of impending earthquakes that did not occur, or did not occur within the parameters listed in the telegrams. During the same time frame, the technique also missed major earthquakes
", with "VAN predictions have been criticized as being too vague
" and "... have been evaluated by several workers.
" "Several workers" is a bit amusing, as you have glossed over that some of the workers you cite evaluated these predictions negatively.
5) And in your edit of 14:00 - "removing of unused sources and outdated external link" - the external link you removed was the April 1998 item in Scientific American ("On shaky ground"), which is two to 17 years more recent than all but one of the articles cited in the article where Varotsos was the lead author. There was no "update", just a removal of an article written for a general reader which happens to be critical.
Individually and collectively these edits show a tendency to weaken, gloss over, or outright remove criticism, and to promote the views of VAN. This violates WP:NPOV.
By the way, I see that you have just removed the neutrality tag. Please note Help:Maintenance template removal#When to remove and Help:Maintenance template removal#When not to remove. Your removal is premature. (I believe all five of the "not" cases are applicable.) You should consider a self-reversion to avoid the appearance of edit-warring. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) ( talk) 00:41, 24 May 2016 (UTC)
It has been thirty days since I provided specific criticism of these non-neutral edits, and there has been no response. Time permitting, I will resolving these matters as I see fit. Though this article really needs a complete re-write. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) ( talk) 20:20, 23 June 2016 (UTC)
I have tagged the
VAN_method#Earthquake prediction using "natural time" analysis section as
WP:FRINGE as being undue promotion (see also
WP:PROFRINGE) of "an idea not broadly supported by scholarship in its field
". As touched upon at
Talk:Earthquake prediction#Item d: removal of "natural time" material as being fringe, the concept is barely known (only 270 some hits on Google Scholar), with the majority of papers mentioning this concept from the small group of proponents; there are zero hits at the prominent journals BSSA and GSA. I propose to delete this section in due course. ~
J. Johnson (JJ) (
talk)
20:14, 23 June 2016 (UTC)
the majority of papers mentioning this concept are from the small group of proponents, and that it has received no recognition in mainstream science." And don't forget the key caveat of being (or not) "
broadly supported by scholarship in its field", nor our discussion about whether seismology is the appropriate field. Note also that "
many mainstream reports on VAN in the Greek popular press" is NOT any kind of scholarship. And I quite doubt much (if any!) of that coverage about in the popular press was about "natural time". Mind, I'm not saying that "natural time" shouldn't be mentioned here. But it is fringe, and any mention of it should note that. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) ( talk) 23:49, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
The sentence "These reports are inserted in papers housed in arXiv, and new reports are currently being made and uploaded there."
is supported by nothing more than "
http://arxiv.org/, search for 'Varotsos'."
, which is clearly not an actual citation. Besides that, if one actually does search arXiv for
Varotsos, the last time anything even vaguely relevant appears to have been inserted into a paper there was 5 August 2015: "Two new SES activities were recorded at KER on 24 & 30 July 2015..."
, which hardly supports describing reports as being made "currently." --
tronvillain (
talk)
22:34, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
IP202, this never ceases to amaze me. Is there a publication where VAN makes this claim that all these publications are M6 predictions? Or, is this just your own speculation? Are you willing to tell us anything at all about the basis of your statement?
If VAN is afraid to identify these as "predictions" because of liability concerns (which you've mentioned in the past), how would they feel about your taking on the role of their unofficial spokesman for Wikipedia purposes?
By my count, there were thirteen Varotsos authored or co-authored publications on arXiv between 2006 and the present. Of these, nine received updated versions (44 updates altogether). Does the first article in each series represent a prediction, and the updates are issued as more salient events in natural time progression occur? Or is each of the 57 articles and updates supposed to be read independently as an M6 prediction?
Do you have any opinion about how many of these M6 predictions were "successful" by some objective criteria? JerryRussell ( talk) 18:39, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
Citations
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---|
|
An IP editor has visited the page. AA/IP202, I presume? At any rate, I don't have any objection to including VAN responses to criticism in this article, but will be editing for neutral presentation. JerryRussell ( talk) 02:29, 24 April 2017 (UTC)
Varotsos and his team are still publishing, so they're still in the game. My feeling (along with AA) was that the material AA has just added here, also belonged in the EQ prediction article. And I admit there was no solid consensus in its favor there. But no solid consensus against, either. My question 6, "right of rebuttal", was intended to address this sort of question. And the answer came back, all content must be judged in accordance with WP:WEIGHT and WP:NPOV.
So it's up to editorial judgment. Considering that the scope of this article is the VAN method itself, it seems to me that NPOV requires VAN's opinion to be fully represented, even more so than at that other article. But if the three of us here so far are in disagreement, maybe we should seek more input?
Elriana, any thoughts?
JerryRussell (
talk)
01:16, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
VAN obtained statistically significant results" (etc.) in no way repeals the mainstream assessment otherwise. Allowing such rejoinders is just special pleading which, while it might confuse the matter for our readers, does absolutely nothing to alter VAN's standing in mainstream science. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) ( talk) 23:27, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
For what it's worth: I have been doing various clean-up in the article – fixing citations, "de-naming" refs, copy editing, and removing some doubtful claims – preparatory to a possible review. Many of the doubtful claims were recently added by WP:SPA User:EyeCont. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) ( talk) 01:18, 29 February 2020 (UTC)
I just updated the literature. What I inserted are just recent publications in well known international scientific journals, which cannot be of course characterized as doubtful claims.-- EyeCont ( talk) 13:51, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
I just updated the literature."
In 2018 the statistical significance of the VAN method was revisited ....", cited to Sarlis' 2018 piece in Entropy. While Entropy might indeed be a well known international journal, it is not notably a journal of seismology, nor its editors and peer reviewers known for their competence in seismology. Indeed, the quality of its publisher's peer review has been questioned (see citations at MDPI), and it may be more of a vanity publisher. And of course Sarlis is not an independent investigator, being a close colleague of Varotsos.
I just updated the literature" reeks of bad-faith editing.
To J. Johnson: My bona fide suggestion (following your own strong suggestion, see talk in Earthquake Prediction on March 5, 2020 at 00:54) is as follows: Since a consensus had been achieved among several editors during 2017, I now restore exactly this version as edited by Jerry Russel (talk/contribs) at 04:30, 30 April 2017. If you consent to the above, we can start a bona fide discussion on each subsequent addition from either side until a new consensus will be established.-- EyeCont ( talk) 11:52, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
I support the start of the discussion from the community consensus achieved back in 2017. This way new consensus can be achieved, step by step, for all topics. ManosHacker talk 13:31, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
In the end of the third paragraph of the lead section, Papadopoulos' complaint is stated there as a final word, although it has been answered in the same issue. The following phrase should be added:
, but this complaint was answered on the same issue. [Uyeda S., Kamogawa M., EOS Trans. AGU 91,163 (2010)]
If no objection is expressed, I will update the article.-- EyeCont ( talk) 07:41, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
The following content is suggested to be added to the third paragraph of the section: "Predictive success":
On the other hand, the Section "EARTHQUAKE PRECURSORS AND PREDICTION" of "Encyclopedia of Solid Earth Geophysics: part of "Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series" (Springer 2011) edited by Harsh K. Gupta, ends as follows (just before its summary): "it has recently been shown that by analyzing time-series in a newly introduced time domain "natural time", the approach to the critical state can be clearly identified [Sarlis et al. 2008]. This way, they appear to have succeeded in shortening the lead-time of VAN prediction to only a few days [Uyeda and Kamogawa 2008]. This means, seismic data may play an amazing role in short term precursor when combined with SES data". Furthermore, in 2018, the statistical significance of the VAN method was revisited by employing modern techniques, such as event coincidence analysis (ECA)[Donges et al 2016] and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) [Fawcett 2006], which revealed that SES exhibit precursory information far beyond chance.[Sarlis 2018]
The above contains the exact excerpt from the encyclopedia. I feel should be reproduced in the article, as it answers an open question. The rest of the citations are:
If no objection is expressed, I will update the article.-- EyeCont ( talk) 08:36, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
The last sentence which reads Susan Hough noted that this amounted to special pleading, making VAN's hypothesis un-falsifiable because it relies on unrepeatable circumstances.
should be deleted, because such a claim does not exist in page 195 of Hough 2010 as cited. If no objection is expressed, I will update the article.--
EyeCont (
talk)
08:59, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
A literature update is missing at the end of the section:
In 2003, modern methods of statistical physics, i.e., detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA), multifractal DFA and wavelet transform revealed that SES are clearly distinguished from those produced by human sources, since the former signals exhibit very strong long range correlations, while the latter signals do not.[Varotsos, Sarlis and Skordas 2003a][Varotsos, Sarlis and Skordas 2003b] A work published in 2020[Christopoulos, Skordas and Sarlis 2020] examined the statistical significance of the minima of the fluctuations of the order parameter κ1 of seismicity by event coincidence analysis as a possible precursor to strong earthquakes in both regional and global level. The results show that these minima are indeed statistically significant earthquake precursors. In particular, in the regional studies the time lag was found to be fully compatible with the finding[Varotsos et al 2013] that these mimima are simultaneous with the initiation of SES activities, thus the distinction of the latter precursory signals from those produced by human sources is evident.
If no objection is expressed, I will update the article.-- EyeCont ( talk) 09:20, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
Just after the "the VAN group issued a series of telegrams in the 1980s"
follows this: , warning of impending earthquakes that did not occur, or did not occur within the parameters listed in the telegrams. During the same time frame, the technique also missed major earthquakes.[Hamada 1993]
, which is cited with Hamada 1993. This is inaccurate and should be replaced with the exact text of Hamada 1993 in order to restore accuracy, as follows: During the same time frame, the technique also missed major earthquakes, in the sense that[Hamada 1993] "for earthquakes with Mb≥5.0, the ratio of the predicted to the total number of earthquakes is 6/12 (50%) and the success rate of the prediction is also 6/12 (50%) with the probability gain of a factor of 4. With a confidence level of 99.8%, the possibility of this success rate being explained by a random model of earthquake occurence taking into account the regional factor which includes high seismicity in the prediction area, can be rejected". This study concludes that "the statistical examination of the SES predictions proved high rates of success prediction and predicted events with high probability gain. This suggests a physical connection between SES and subsequent earthquakes, at least for an event of magnitude of Ms≥5".[Hamada 1993]
If no objection is expressed, I will update the article.-- EyeCont ( talk) 10:42, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
Regarding "Major opponents of VAN were the Greek seismologists Vassilis Papazachos and G. Stavrakakis. The debate between Papazachos and the VAN team has repeatedly caused public attention in their home country Greece and has been extensively discussed in the Greek media.[citation needed]"
, although a citation for this excerpt has been asked for, not any citation has been provided for a long time. In order to retain this excerpt, please provide a citation.--
EyeCont (
talk)
10:59, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
I have not looked in detail at the proposed changes that have now been enacted. I've just been busy elsewhere and this was quite a lot to take in. I will now try to find some time to consider these changes and probably add some more sources that are critical of the way that the VAN method is currently implemented, because it now reads like all issues have been answered and everyone's happy with the method, which is definitely not true. As I said elsewhere, my take on this (and it's only a guess and impossible to prove) is that most seismologists involved in the field of earthquake forecasting/prediction are just ignoring the VAN method. Best of all would be examples of reviews by seismologists not previously involved in the debate regarding its applicability. Mikenorton ( talk) 11:57, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
@ Mikenorton:Top seismologists are using the seismological analysis part of the updated VAN method extensively nowdays and apply it to earthquake nowcasting. ManosHacker talk 10:48, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
@ Mikenorton: According to the bibliography these recent changes are scientifically correct. Looking at Helman's whole work I do not see this paper of his as an appropriate review but rather as another example of misunderstanding of the physics of VAN method. Hayakawa is a top unrelated seismologist who does a review on VAN method. A fact (rather than scientific debates in equilibrium in questions and answers) missing from the lead section is that VAN method is being systematically applied since 1981 in Greece and is being funded by the state all along. Next is to summarize VAN method for earthquake prediction article. ManosHacker talk 09:05, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
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128.112.22.28 was me. Ulixes 23:59, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
I am tagging this article as "unbalanced" in that it gives VAN more status than warranted. An indication of this is that the eight items under "Further reading" are all by Varotsos and colleagues (and the usefulness of some these doubtful). Recent edits by 134.139.204.63 suggest an attempt to rehabilitate VAN based on a new book; there is no comment on the book, or why it changes the criticisms made of VAN in the 1990s. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) ( talk) 19:17, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
As WP:BALANCE requires treatment in proportion to the weight of the sources, and most sources challenge the validity of the VAN method, I propose the lead be rewritten as folloows:
Notes:
If there are no objections I will dig out the missing reference(s), and make this revision. Caveat: I prefer all the references in a References section, linked by {{ harv}} short-cites, as it really is easier. But I haven't decided if I want to pull out all the citations and convert to harv, or just dump my references into the refs. Anyone else have any strong preferences here? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) ( talk) 21:59, 12 May 2013 (UTC)
I am a bit dismayed by your repeated reference to "anti-VAN" sources; it seems to me that you do have a bit of inclination here. That the "VAN method" is controverted is a fact; to state that Varotsos et al. claim successes without mentioning that those claims are controverted would amount to promotion of VAN. My proposed text is very simple: it states 1) the claim that the VAN method successfully predicts earthquakes, 2) that this has been criticized, and 3) the finding of the ICEFCP, which as close as we can get (so far) to settling the matter. I believe that is reasonably balanced. (For the missing "pro-VAN" references I have in mind one or two of the early VAN papers, and the editor's introduction to the TP issue.) If there is unbalance in this it is in giving VAN equal weight whereas NPOV (specifically, WP:WEIGHT) requires proportionality. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) ( talk) 00:03, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
I believe that the VAN team have never published circuit diagrams of the SES front end, which critics claim that may respond to industrial frequency and RF signals. I have only seen a set of block diagrams of the front end, without specific details (K. Nomikos: "The telemetric of VAN group", A Critical Review of VAN, 1996). Even the ICs used in the front end are not listed. I don't know of any evaluation of EMC performance of the front end by an independent laboratory. This lack of information reduces the credibility of the method and allows opponents to publish claims about TV signals, military UHF repeaters, etc. Has anyone seen a detailed description of the analog part of the VAN system ? SV1XV ( talk) 07:13, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
I believe this section is too technical and esoteric. I would delete most of the material and replace it with the following, much simpler version:
If this deletion is accepted, we could even delete the separate section and move the remaining text into "Description of VAN". SV1XV ( talk) 15:52, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
Regarding natural time analysis -- I haven't seen any criticism of it. I'm not an expert! Their method does seem legitimate -- simply signal filtering, with some terms introduced to give weight to the ordering of events. This kind of work is empirical -- if they get results, then it's acceptable. I'm concerned that some of the criticism of their earlier method was directed at their catalog of seismic events. They may have been leaving some earthquake data out deliberately -- at least that was the implication of some of the criticism. Or, they may just have taken seismic data from one source and not another. None of their work has been retracted, as far as I know. The criticism might be unfounded. In the Springer book they did include a set of seismic events they predicted between 2001 and 2010, and it wouldn't be that hard to see whether they have left out any. I think mostly their work has been ignored. Again, I do like the fact that they are trying to do something. Natural time -- that's just their way of saying time series analysis. There's nothing particularly controversial about it, other than their choice of language, as far as I can tell. It's just data analysis, looking for criticality in the data. Mostly they like to have their filtered data with values between zero and one, so that the numbers get smaller when they are multiplied together, and you can pick out changes or set different critical thresholds easily. Thanks for the link to their work. BTW, some of their articles have the term "entropy" -- and this term has nothing to do with thermodynamic entropy. They've just constructed an equation to look at variance in the data (similar to their kappa term) and picked "entropy." A confusing choice of nomenclature. Daniel Helman ( talk) 04:55, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
I looked at a little of the "natural time" material, and it looks like junk. (Just window dressing to burnish the discredited SES selection process.) Varotsos also claims that it can identify cardiac patients at risk of sudden death, but Google search results suggest he is being ignored by the medical community. I think there is a strong case for this being a WP:fringe theory, which should be clearly identified as such. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) ( talk) 23:17, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
Currently all of the "references" (full citations) seem to be setup in cite templates, but in each individual footnote. I am thinking of pulling them all out and putting them in a real "References" section (not just a spot for {{ reflist}}) because this is easier. But there are some other complications, like then I would have to put short cites in the text/notes. Comments? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) ( talk) 22:28, 25 May 2013 (UTC)
Did it. Replaced full references in the text with Harv short cites. (Some of these could use page specifications.) Corrected some errors and augmented the references, put them in alpahabetical order in "References". ~ J. Johnson (JJ) ( talk) 23:38, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
I propose removing the "primary sources" tag that asks for secondary or tertiary sources to be added. The statement is true, but the reality is that essentially there are no secondary or tertiary sources on this topic (Wikipedia leads the pack!) except for the Mary Lazaridou-Varotsos book, which is seriously COI. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) ( talk) 22:29, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
Anyone else think that some of the text for the bullet points rambles and is unclear? I think each point should be rewritten for style. I'll do it if I can get around to it -- very busy right now. :) Daniel Helman ( talk) 22:41, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
Scientific articles critical of VAN in chronological order, with summaries.
My short-form naming scheme (optional!) is straight forward: author(s), year (yy), a code for the journal, volume. In some cases page number (opt.) follows an underscore.
= Special issue of Geophysical Research Letters:
= In the Lighthill volume:
= Subsequent:
‡ Indicates a non-primary source.
Tentative listing of main criticisms (extracted from above).
(What follows is comments from Daniel Helman) -- You have put in a huge amount of effort into this. It is wonderful! Here are some comments -- I'd like to assert that * Papadopoulos10-eos91 was written in bad faith. The text of the note is here: Uyeda and Kamogawa [2008] reported on the VAN experimental method for short-term earthquake prediction (VAN was named for three Greek physicists, Panayiotis Varotsos, Kessar Alexopoulos, and Konstantine Nomicos), which reportedly recorded seismic electric signals (SESs) before the Mw 6.8 earthquake on 14 February 2008. They claimed that a prediction is documented by P. A. Varotsos et al. (Seismic electric signals and 1/f “noise” in natural time, version 3, 2008; available at http://arxiv.org/abs/0711.3766v3) and in the newspaper Ethnos (10 February 2008; http://www.ethnos.gr/article.asp?catid=11424&subid2&tag=8777&pubid=444473). This claim is unjustified because the prediction was not submitted to Greece's Permanent Special Scientific Committee for the Assessment of Seismic Hazard and the Evaluation of Seismic Risk. According to Greek legislation, the committee is officially charged with analyzing and vetting earthquake hazard assessments (including predictions and ongoing seismic crises) and ultimately advising the government. Through civil protection authorities, the government handles the social, economic, and other negative consequences of impending earthquakes. But perhaps more scientifically grievous, this prediction was not documented elsewhere beforehand.
And a rebuttal is here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2010EO180004/abstract "We welcome the critical comments of Papadopoulos [2010]. We must point out, however, that most of them are incorrect.
First, on 1 February 2008, P. A. Varotsos et al. (Seismic electric signals and 1/f “noise” in natural time, version 3, 2008; available at http://arxiv.org/abs/0711.3766v3) did document the seismic electric signal (SES) activity for the M 6—class earthquake, recorded at station PIR (one of the SES measuring stations located close to Pirgos city in western Greece) on 14 January 2008, and assigned the epicentral area (approximately 250 × 250 kilometers). Two weeks after the documentation, the Mw 6.9 Greek earthquake in question occurred, on 14 February 2008. As to the occurrence time of this earthquake, the newspaper Ethnos on 10 February 2008 ( http://www.ethnos.gr/article.asp?catid=11424&subid2&tag=8777&pubid=444473) reported it as “imminent.” Second, we did not mention two relatively small Patras shocks on 4 February 2008 simply because VAN also documented them (P. A. Varotsos et al., 2008, version 3) based on separate SES activity recorded on 10 January 2008 at Patras."
To continue: Papadopoulos ought to have known that Varotsos et al. are barred from reporting their results directly to Greece's Committee for the Assessment of Earthquake Hazard, and therefore his note is disingenuous. That's not to say that the updated VAN method has been confirmed -- just that Papadopoulos' note is particularly odd.
Most of the criticisms in the above list refer to the VAN method before time series analysis. I see the three outstanding criticisms of the VAN method as: (1) The origin of purported SES is hard to confirm. Many may be spurious. (2) The method has not been tested by scientists outside of Greece and Japan. Uyeda seems to be working closely with Vartosos et al. (3) False alarms endanger the public, and more care ought to be taken in issuing claims.
Let me run down the list of major criticisms, and add two cents to each:
In general, I think what distinguishes a "major" criticism from minor criticisms is its usefulness to scientific understanding. I would class the following as minor criticisms, as they are explained by the empirical nature of prediction:
I would class the following as mean-spirited, and not even "minor" in nature, but, instead, untrue:
I would class the following as no longer true of the VAN method, since they revised it in 2001 to include time series analysis:
(1) Though they outline a few methods for distinguishing artificial from genuine signals in the Springer book, these still need to be verified extensively, especially if the method is to be used in other metropolitan areas, like Los Angeles. (2) Selective sensitivity of stations is based on correlation of electric signals with seismic events. There are some examples from the book of artificial seismic events (blasting) producing electric signals. A standard protocol should be devised so that a specified number of artificial events can be used to constrain how likely the correlations of natural seismic events are with the purported SES. (3) Generation is still an issue, but newer papers are extant, such as those by Freund, and these look at mechanisms. I don't find a criticism saying "it's physically impossible" to be good science. One must fit the analysis to the observed data, and not the other way around. (4) Transmission is still an issue, but faults are much more electrically conductive than the surrounding rock, and articles have been published showing transmission is possible. Again, I don't find the criticism saying "it's physically impossible" to be good science. If one model is wrong, then one looks for another to explain the phenomena.
This leaves the following as major criticisms of the VAN method, with an emphasis on the origin and transmission of SES:
And the following as major criticisms of the VAN method, with an emphasis on their methodology:
Let me know what you think of what I've written, above? And do you agree that these are the general categories of the major criticisms of the VAN method? (1) The origin of purported SES is hard to confirm. Many may be spurious. (2) The method has not been tested by scientists outside of Greece and Japan. (3) False alarms endanger the public, and more care ought to be taken in issuing claims. Daniel Helman ( talk) 21:20, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
I have tagged the article as non-neutral. A series of edits on 6 May (starting here) from an IP address geolocated to the University of Athens (home of VAN) generally blunted or removed criticism, while adding comments that these have been "refuted by VAN" (etc.). The general trend is to soften or remove criticism, and promote the views of VAN. I rolled back those edits, but they were largely restored by 77.69.86.91 (geolocated to an Athens suburb). The same IP did a similar series of edits about VAN at Earthquake prediction, which I have discussed in detail at Talk:Earthquake prediction#Re 195.134.89.153's VAN edits. (S/he also tagged the section on the VAN predictions with neutrality, but has not provided any discussion.)
Hard to say what should be done, as this article really needs a deep review, and revision. But no where near the top of my priorities. If anyone with some familiarity with the field (and access to a good university library) wants a challenging summer project, this would be a good time to speak up. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) ( talk) 22:45, 22 May 2016 (UTC)
I have no idea what you mean by "someone should have protected the article from neutrality
", but I will point to several specific "neutrality issues" with your edits.
1) In your edits of 6 May 2016, the first one (at 10:35) was an extended description of "natural time analysis". While Google Scholar shows a number of papers on that, it seems that most of them involve one or more of "P Varotsos, NV Sarlis, ES Skorda" - i.e., the original authors. I do not see (nor have you shown) any general acceptance of this concept, so this edit appears to be undue promotion of a theory with little support or use in mainstream science, amounting to questionable science that borders on being fringe.
2) In your
edit of 10:58 you removed an important fact, that "Currently, the major criticism of the VAN method is that results have not yet been replicated by scientists outside specific research groups in Greece and Japan.
"
3) At
11:48 ("balancing by including the corresponding replies to the criticism") you replaced a detailed examination of a VAN claim of "one-to-one correlation between SESs and earthquake
" with "the correlation between SESs and earthquakes was later criticized ....
"
4) At
13:54 you replaced "the VAN group issued a series of telegrams in the 1980s, warning of impending earthquakes that did not occur, or did not occur within the parameters listed in the telegrams. During the same time frame, the technique also missed major earthquakes
", with "VAN predictions have been criticized as being too vague
" and "... have been evaluated by several workers.
" "Several workers" is a bit amusing, as you have glossed over that some of the workers you cite evaluated these predictions negatively.
5) And in your edit of 14:00 - "removing of unused sources and outdated external link" - the external link you removed was the April 1998 item in Scientific American ("On shaky ground"), which is two to 17 years more recent than all but one of the articles cited in the article where Varotsos was the lead author. There was no "update", just a removal of an article written for a general reader which happens to be critical.
Individually and collectively these edits show a tendency to weaken, gloss over, or outright remove criticism, and to promote the views of VAN. This violates WP:NPOV.
By the way, I see that you have just removed the neutrality tag. Please note Help:Maintenance template removal#When to remove and Help:Maintenance template removal#When not to remove. Your removal is premature. (I believe all five of the "not" cases are applicable.) You should consider a self-reversion to avoid the appearance of edit-warring. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) ( talk) 00:41, 24 May 2016 (UTC)
It has been thirty days since I provided specific criticism of these non-neutral edits, and there has been no response. Time permitting, I will resolving these matters as I see fit. Though this article really needs a complete re-write. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) ( talk) 20:20, 23 June 2016 (UTC)
I have tagged the
VAN_method#Earthquake prediction using "natural time" analysis section as
WP:FRINGE as being undue promotion (see also
WP:PROFRINGE) of "an idea not broadly supported by scholarship in its field
". As touched upon at
Talk:Earthquake prediction#Item d: removal of "natural time" material as being fringe, the concept is barely known (only 270 some hits on Google Scholar), with the majority of papers mentioning this concept from the small group of proponents; there are zero hits at the prominent journals BSSA and GSA. I propose to delete this section in due course. ~
J. Johnson (JJ) (
talk)
20:14, 23 June 2016 (UTC)
the majority of papers mentioning this concept are from the small group of proponents, and that it has received no recognition in mainstream science." And don't forget the key caveat of being (or not) "
broadly supported by scholarship in its field", nor our discussion about whether seismology is the appropriate field. Note also that "
many mainstream reports on VAN in the Greek popular press" is NOT any kind of scholarship. And I quite doubt much (if any!) of that coverage about in the popular press was about "natural time". Mind, I'm not saying that "natural time" shouldn't be mentioned here. But it is fringe, and any mention of it should note that. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) ( talk) 23:49, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
The sentence "These reports are inserted in papers housed in arXiv, and new reports are currently being made and uploaded there."
is supported by nothing more than "
http://arxiv.org/, search for 'Varotsos'."
, which is clearly not an actual citation. Besides that, if one actually does search arXiv for
Varotsos, the last time anything even vaguely relevant appears to have been inserted into a paper there was 5 August 2015: "Two new SES activities were recorded at KER on 24 & 30 July 2015..."
, which hardly supports describing reports as being made "currently." --
tronvillain (
talk)
22:34, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
IP202, this never ceases to amaze me. Is there a publication where VAN makes this claim that all these publications are M6 predictions? Or, is this just your own speculation? Are you willing to tell us anything at all about the basis of your statement?
If VAN is afraid to identify these as "predictions" because of liability concerns (which you've mentioned in the past), how would they feel about your taking on the role of their unofficial spokesman for Wikipedia purposes?
By my count, there were thirteen Varotsos authored or co-authored publications on arXiv between 2006 and the present. Of these, nine received updated versions (44 updates altogether). Does the first article in each series represent a prediction, and the updates are issued as more salient events in natural time progression occur? Or is each of the 57 articles and updates supposed to be read independently as an M6 prediction?
Do you have any opinion about how many of these M6 predictions were "successful" by some objective criteria? JerryRussell ( talk) 18:39, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
Citations
|
---|
|
An IP editor has visited the page. AA/IP202, I presume? At any rate, I don't have any objection to including VAN responses to criticism in this article, but will be editing for neutral presentation. JerryRussell ( talk) 02:29, 24 April 2017 (UTC)
Varotsos and his team are still publishing, so they're still in the game. My feeling (along with AA) was that the material AA has just added here, also belonged in the EQ prediction article. And I admit there was no solid consensus in its favor there. But no solid consensus against, either. My question 6, "right of rebuttal", was intended to address this sort of question. And the answer came back, all content must be judged in accordance with WP:WEIGHT and WP:NPOV.
So it's up to editorial judgment. Considering that the scope of this article is the VAN method itself, it seems to me that NPOV requires VAN's opinion to be fully represented, even more so than at that other article. But if the three of us here so far are in disagreement, maybe we should seek more input?
Elriana, any thoughts?
JerryRussell (
talk)
01:16, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
VAN obtained statistically significant results" (etc.) in no way repeals the mainstream assessment otherwise. Allowing such rejoinders is just special pleading which, while it might confuse the matter for our readers, does absolutely nothing to alter VAN's standing in mainstream science. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) ( talk) 23:27, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
For what it's worth: I have been doing various clean-up in the article – fixing citations, "de-naming" refs, copy editing, and removing some doubtful claims – preparatory to a possible review. Many of the doubtful claims were recently added by WP:SPA User:EyeCont. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) ( talk) 01:18, 29 February 2020 (UTC)
I just updated the literature. What I inserted are just recent publications in well known international scientific journals, which cannot be of course characterized as doubtful claims.-- EyeCont ( talk) 13:51, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
I just updated the literature."
In 2018 the statistical significance of the VAN method was revisited ....", cited to Sarlis' 2018 piece in Entropy. While Entropy might indeed be a well known international journal, it is not notably a journal of seismology, nor its editors and peer reviewers known for their competence in seismology. Indeed, the quality of its publisher's peer review has been questioned (see citations at MDPI), and it may be more of a vanity publisher. And of course Sarlis is not an independent investigator, being a close colleague of Varotsos.
I just updated the literature" reeks of bad-faith editing.
To J. Johnson: My bona fide suggestion (following your own strong suggestion, see talk in Earthquake Prediction on March 5, 2020 at 00:54) is as follows: Since a consensus had been achieved among several editors during 2017, I now restore exactly this version as edited by Jerry Russel (talk/contribs) at 04:30, 30 April 2017. If you consent to the above, we can start a bona fide discussion on each subsequent addition from either side until a new consensus will be established.-- EyeCont ( talk) 11:52, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
I support the start of the discussion from the community consensus achieved back in 2017. This way new consensus can be achieved, step by step, for all topics. ManosHacker talk 13:31, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
In the end of the third paragraph of the lead section, Papadopoulos' complaint is stated there as a final word, although it has been answered in the same issue. The following phrase should be added:
, but this complaint was answered on the same issue. [Uyeda S., Kamogawa M., EOS Trans. AGU 91,163 (2010)]
If no objection is expressed, I will update the article.-- EyeCont ( talk) 07:41, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
The following content is suggested to be added to the third paragraph of the section: "Predictive success":
On the other hand, the Section "EARTHQUAKE PRECURSORS AND PREDICTION" of "Encyclopedia of Solid Earth Geophysics: part of "Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series" (Springer 2011) edited by Harsh K. Gupta, ends as follows (just before its summary): "it has recently been shown that by analyzing time-series in a newly introduced time domain "natural time", the approach to the critical state can be clearly identified [Sarlis et al. 2008]. This way, they appear to have succeeded in shortening the lead-time of VAN prediction to only a few days [Uyeda and Kamogawa 2008]. This means, seismic data may play an amazing role in short term precursor when combined with SES data". Furthermore, in 2018, the statistical significance of the VAN method was revisited by employing modern techniques, such as event coincidence analysis (ECA)[Donges et al 2016] and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) [Fawcett 2006], which revealed that SES exhibit precursory information far beyond chance.[Sarlis 2018]
The above contains the exact excerpt from the encyclopedia. I feel should be reproduced in the article, as it answers an open question. The rest of the citations are:
If no objection is expressed, I will update the article.-- EyeCont ( talk) 08:36, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
The last sentence which reads Susan Hough noted that this amounted to special pleading, making VAN's hypothesis un-falsifiable because it relies on unrepeatable circumstances.
should be deleted, because such a claim does not exist in page 195 of Hough 2010 as cited. If no objection is expressed, I will update the article.--
EyeCont (
talk)
08:59, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
A literature update is missing at the end of the section:
In 2003, modern methods of statistical physics, i.e., detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA), multifractal DFA and wavelet transform revealed that SES are clearly distinguished from those produced by human sources, since the former signals exhibit very strong long range correlations, while the latter signals do not.[Varotsos, Sarlis and Skordas 2003a][Varotsos, Sarlis and Skordas 2003b] A work published in 2020[Christopoulos, Skordas and Sarlis 2020] examined the statistical significance of the minima of the fluctuations of the order parameter κ1 of seismicity by event coincidence analysis as a possible precursor to strong earthquakes in both regional and global level. The results show that these minima are indeed statistically significant earthquake precursors. In particular, in the regional studies the time lag was found to be fully compatible with the finding[Varotsos et al 2013] that these mimima are simultaneous with the initiation of SES activities, thus the distinction of the latter precursory signals from those produced by human sources is evident.
If no objection is expressed, I will update the article.-- EyeCont ( talk) 09:20, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
Just after the "the VAN group issued a series of telegrams in the 1980s"
follows this: , warning of impending earthquakes that did not occur, or did not occur within the parameters listed in the telegrams. During the same time frame, the technique also missed major earthquakes.[Hamada 1993]
, which is cited with Hamada 1993. This is inaccurate and should be replaced with the exact text of Hamada 1993 in order to restore accuracy, as follows: During the same time frame, the technique also missed major earthquakes, in the sense that[Hamada 1993] "for earthquakes with Mb≥5.0, the ratio of the predicted to the total number of earthquakes is 6/12 (50%) and the success rate of the prediction is also 6/12 (50%) with the probability gain of a factor of 4. With a confidence level of 99.8%, the possibility of this success rate being explained by a random model of earthquake occurence taking into account the regional factor which includes high seismicity in the prediction area, can be rejected". This study concludes that "the statistical examination of the SES predictions proved high rates of success prediction and predicted events with high probability gain. This suggests a physical connection between SES and subsequent earthquakes, at least for an event of magnitude of Ms≥5".[Hamada 1993]
If no objection is expressed, I will update the article.-- EyeCont ( talk) 10:42, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
Regarding "Major opponents of VAN were the Greek seismologists Vassilis Papazachos and G. Stavrakakis. The debate between Papazachos and the VAN team has repeatedly caused public attention in their home country Greece and has been extensively discussed in the Greek media.[citation needed]"
, although a citation for this excerpt has been asked for, not any citation has been provided for a long time. In order to retain this excerpt, please provide a citation.--
EyeCont (
talk)
10:59, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
I have not looked in detail at the proposed changes that have now been enacted. I've just been busy elsewhere and this was quite a lot to take in. I will now try to find some time to consider these changes and probably add some more sources that are critical of the way that the VAN method is currently implemented, because it now reads like all issues have been answered and everyone's happy with the method, which is definitely not true. As I said elsewhere, my take on this (and it's only a guess and impossible to prove) is that most seismologists involved in the field of earthquake forecasting/prediction are just ignoring the VAN method. Best of all would be examples of reviews by seismologists not previously involved in the debate regarding its applicability. Mikenorton ( talk) 11:57, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
@ Mikenorton:Top seismologists are using the seismological analysis part of the updated VAN method extensively nowdays and apply it to earthquake nowcasting. ManosHacker talk 10:48, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
@ Mikenorton: According to the bibliography these recent changes are scientifically correct. Looking at Helman's whole work I do not see this paper of his as an appropriate review but rather as another example of misunderstanding of the physics of VAN method. Hayakawa is a top unrelated seismologist who does a review on VAN method. A fact (rather than scientific debates in equilibrium in questions and answers) missing from the lead section is that VAN method is being systematically applied since 1981 in Greece and is being funded by the state all along. Next is to summarize VAN method for earthquake prediction article. ManosHacker talk 09:05, 30 May 2020 (UTC)