Saturday, September 09, 2006

Critical Thinking News

Apparantly a geologist in India said he developed a model that would predict earthquakes and that it predicted the 2004 Indonesian quake. So as a good scientist he let his model and data be reviewed by other scientists so that the predictions could be independently verified and tested, right? Nah, instead lets tell a bunch of people in India that a Mag 7+ quake is going to hit their area and destroy everything. I think you can figure out
what happened next. Idiot.

This is why good scientists let their theories and models be peer reviewed and independently verified before making rash statements to the public. I hope someone takes Mr. Vetkanathan to task for the problems he caused. I also hope that he will now rethink the usefulness of his model and let it be tested by others, but I'm not holding my breath. He was even so bold as to predict the earthquake to the nearest minute so I'm sure he'll find some excuse for why his wonderful model didn't work.

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