Dr. Prothero on Earthquake Prediction

I have avoided talking about the horrible earthquake in Japan because there are much smarter people than I out there talking much better science than I could. I found one example in this past week's eSkeptic. The article written by Dr. Prothero, a geologist and vertebrate paleontologist at Occidental College in Los Angeles, takes on one of the worst offenders of passing off lies as science.

Among those that got their 15 minutes of fame during the post-quake media blitz was a well-known crank, Jim Berkland, who got a full interview promoting his ideas on Fox News on March 17 (but on no other network). First, the reporter put up a map of the “Ring of Fire” of volcanoes and earthquakes around the Pacific Rim, pointed at Chile, then New Zealand, then Japan, and implied that this circle of quakes might end in California. Apparently, he never consulted a geologist, who would have pointed out that each of those regions is an entirely different type of plate boundary and they have no tectonic plates in common. Then Fox gave Berkland a full five minutes to spout his ideas, with the same credulous reporter tossing him softball questions, and no rebuttal from any other geologist or seismologist.

It is a good article and worth going to read the whole thing. I also want to note that Dr. Prothero is now blogging on the skeptic site so go follow him I am sure he will have some great posts in the future.