Monday, July 21, 2008

Topographic analysis over GPS

These researcher make a hindsight analysis that they would have known the big China earthquake was coming. The topography indicated high strain rates, and the GPS was showing low to moderate. Was the GPS corrupt or politically motivated? Who knows? Most likely these areas can turn their strain rate off and on, depending on what's going on in the region.

I don't like hindsight analysis. The people in one of those previous articles I talked about, laid their bets down and called the future. That's a lot of risk for an ivory-tower type! Maybe his tenure is on the line! Far better to never risk anything.

When I was with the old company, they were experts at hindsight analysis. There, as in academia, or politics, you could never admit you were wrong. In this manner, the analysis was alway perfect, showing exactly what happened. It didn't matter that the physics was crap, only that the results looked good. If they did a forward analysis, it was always to rip out something perfectly good, and replace it. No risk there, since nobody could ever prove you wrong!

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