(a) Pool your existing knowledge of the causes and consequences of earthquakes. Suggest what information might be helpful in predicting where and when earthquakes might occur.

(b) Now discuss the following key questions:

• What are the challenges faced by scientists in trying to understand and predict earthquakes?
• What is the nature of the evidence that provides clues to predicting earthquakes?
• What are the attitudes of scientists to a tricky problem like earthquake prediction?
• How do contributions from different cultures throw light on difficult scientific problems?

Activity 2: Can Cats Predict Earthquakes?

1. Read the article on ‘Seismic Sentries’ available at:

http://www.discovery.com/exp/earthquakes/archive/quake19.html

2. Each member of the group should:

• Prepare a response to the article from one of the following perspectives explored in the programme ‘A Sense of Disaster’:
  • a prediction sceptic (the Robert Geller perspective)
  • a pro-prediction geo-scientist (the Allan Lindh perspective)
  • a pro-prediction physicist (the Motoji Ikeya perspective)
  • an earthquake sensitive (the Ali Rhoden perspective)
• Present their response to the whole group.

3. After hearing all the presentations, the group should evaluate the different perspectives, then vote on the scientific plausibility of the idea that plants and animals provide clues to earthquake activity.

Activity 3: The Sceptical Scientist

In the programme, Dr Robert Geller of the University of Tokyo makes the following statements:

Why is prediction so difficult? Well, first of all an earthquake happens very deep inside the earth. The earth is very complicated, heterogeneous, we don’t know the physical laws governing the way earthquakes happen. How is the stress built up inside the earth, how much energy is available to be released? We also don’t know how the faults slip. In view of all those difficulties, the question is not ‘why can earthquakes not be predicted?’, the obvious question is ‘why does anyone seriously even think earthquake prediction is worth discussing at the present time?’

If every time there’s an earthquake we saw the same kind of signal before that earthquake, we might say ‘well we don’t know what it is but there’s something to it’, but if we see it before one earthquake and we consider the observations and we do not see the same phenomenon before other earthquakes then we have, at least statistically, we have an overwhelming likelihood that it was just some sort of random coincidence.

I haven’t seen lately any articles by the Chinese scientists themselves in refereed scientific journals explaining in detail exactly how it was they allegedly predicted the earthquake, what the evidence was and so on and so on. So I’m very, very sceptical and think the whole thing is just a kind of relic of the cultural revolution.

So why was the public surprised? This is telling me that we, as a community, are not getting the technical tests across to the public, and one reason is that so much time is wasted discussing completely groundless research on earthquake prediction.’

1. You might also find it helpful to check out:

http://helix.nature.com/debates/earthquake/equake_1.html

In this page from the magazine ‘Nature’, Robert Geller provides more evidence supporting his perspective on earthquake prediction.

2. Create a presentation showing the merits and demerits of Robert Geller’s sceptical perspective on earthquake prediction.