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NEWS
For Immediate Release:
May 23, 1996
Contact: Dave Thomas
at (202) 777-7507
Earthquakes are among the most terrifying and destructive natural forces that can be experienced by humans. Their effects are recorded in history from the earthquake that struck the Shaanxi Province of China in 1556, killing over 800,000, to more recent events such as the Northridge, California and Kobe, Japan, earthquakes.
Recent claims by Panayotis Varotsos of the University of Athens that he and two colleagues, Kessar Alexopoulos and Kostas Nomicos, have developed a reliable system of earthquake prediction, known as the VAN method (after the initials of their last names), have fueled an intense scientific controversy.
Most scientists remain unconvinced of the method's value, but Varotsos has a few strong supporters. The Japanese government has committed itself to investing millions of dollars on further research in the method. The May 27 issue of Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), published by the American Geophysical Union, will be entirely devoted to a "Debate" on the VAN method of earthquake prediction. This unique format allows the critics of the VAN method to square off directly with Varotsos. Despite years of work by scientists around the world, no generally accepted prediction method has ever been developed. Many claims to have developed successful prediction methods have later proved groundless, leading to general skepticism by the scientific community. Charles F. Richter, the noted seismologist who developed the Richter scale for quantifying the size of earthquakes, said in 1964 that "Claims to predict usually come from cranks, publicity seekers, or people who pretend to foresee the future in general." This is still the consensus of the scientific community today.
Claiming that their research has shown that materials under stress emit characteristic electrical signals, the developers of VAN say that it is possible to predict earthquakes by measuring anomalous electrical activity in the ground. Varotsos maintains that he has correctly predicted the location, time, and magnitude of a number of earthquakes.
Articles for the special GRL issue that are critical of the VAN method have been contributed by scientists from the U.S., Europe, New Zealand, and Japan. Each critical article is followed immediately by a direct reply by Varotsos and his colleagues. Several neutral or favorable articles are also included in the special issue.
Among the criticisms leveled at VAN are: (1) The success rate of the method does not exceed random chance; (2) The hypothesis underlying VAN's work has changed frequently and drastically, thereby making statistical tests of their work meaningless; (3) Some of VAN's claims of successful predictions have been based on misrepresentation of the facts; and (4) VAN's announcements before earthquakes have been so vague that they should not be considered "earthquake predictions" in the first place. Varotsos and his colleagues respond to each of these criticisms. The world scientific community will be the judges of this "Debate."
To assist you in understanding this controversy, the following participants in the debate are available to answer your questions: