Science 14 March 1997:
Vol. 275. no. 5306, pp. 1616 - 0
DOI: 10.1126/science.275.5306.1616
    
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Perspectives
Enhanced: Earthquakes Cannot Be Predicted

Robert J. Geller, David D. Jackson, Yan Y. Kagan, Francesco Mulargia

R. J. Geller [hn1] is at the Department of Earth and Planetary Physics, Faculty of Science, Tokyo University, Yayoi 2-11-16, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113, Japan. E-mail:bob@global.geoph.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp. D. D. Jackson and Y. Y. Kagan [hn2-3] are at the Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1567, USA. E-mail:djackson@ucla.edu and ykagan@ucla.edu. F. Mulargia [hn4] is at the Dipartimento di Fisica, Settore di Geofisica, Universita di Bologna, Viale Berti Pichat 8, 40127 Bologna, Italy. E-mail:mulargia@ibogfs.df.unibo.it
Earthquake prediction [hn5-7] is usually defined as the specification of the time, location, and magnitude [hn8-9] of a future earthquake within stated limits. Prediction would have to be reliable (few false alarms and few failures) and accurate (small ranges of uncertainty in space, time, and magnitude) to justify the cost of response. Previous Perspectives inScience may have given a favorable impression of prediction research, and the news media and some optimistic scientists encourage the belief that earthquakes can be predicted (1). Recent research suggests to us that this belief is incorrect.