Turkey earthquake: Scientific community slams Frank Hoogerbeets’ ‘Planetary Geometry Prediction’
Turkey was rocked by a large 7.8-magnitude earthquake on Monday, a natural calamity that’s being termed the worst in many decades.
Over 2,500 people have been reported dead so far with many thousands injured or yet to be found. Hundreds of buildings have become ground-zero as well, leaving masses both homeless and hapless.
While the quake shook the earth in Italy, a tweet ‘predicting’ the horrific event also caused shockwaves on the internet. Soon after the quake, nearly everyone on the internet was sharing the tweet, and also believing in it.
The prediction and predictors
The tweet was posted by a self-proclaimed “researcher” Frank Hoogerbeets days before the disaster on Friday, February 3, 2023. “Sooner or later there will be a ~M 7.5 #earthquake in this region (South-Central Turkey, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon). #deprem,” it read.
Hoogerbeets describes himself as a “researcher at SSGEOS, with “utmost respect for planets, especially Earth.”
In its description, SSGEOS (Solar System Geometry Survey) describes itself as a “research institute for monitoring geometry between celestial bodies related to seismic activity.”
The scientific community reacts
The ‘prediction’ has drawn a severe backlash from the scientific community which has raised questions about the validity of the group’s methodology for making such predictions.
“A prediction should state time, place and magnitude. ‘Sooner or later’ does not constitute a time. So he did not predict the quake,” Roger Musson, author and geoscientist told Newsweek.
Other scientists also slammed the dubious method used to make such predictions about earthquakes.
“I could say that ‘sooner or later’ there will be a M7 earthquake on the half of the E[ast] Anatolian fault that did not move today. I would be right, but it would be of no value as a prediction,” David Rothery, Professor of Planetary Geosciences at the Open University, told Newsweek.
Previous inaccurate ‘predictions’
While the said tweet might look like a well-time and accurate prediction about the Turkey earthquake, many of Hoogbeets’ and SSGEOS’ previous predictions have proven inaccurate.
Many of those predictions are either too vague, or state the obvious by targeting the well-known danger zones that are known to be near prominent tectonic fault lines with a recorded history of high seismic activity.
An instance of Hoogerbeets’ faulty predictions was when he forecast a large 8+ magnitude earthquake for 2018 Christmas, which, fortunately enough, never happened. Then too, his prediction was rubbished by experts who called him a ‘mystic’.
No way of predicting earthquakes
To date, there exists no proven scientific method to accurately predict earthquakes, let alone by ‘planetary observations’.
While we may have mapped out the danger zones and fault lines, and can say where such events can take place, there is, or may never be, any way to predict exactly when the earthquake will take place.
The secret to why such pseudoscience even goes viral spreading misinformation lies in the widespread use of social media, where such old posts tend to resurface as ‘prophecies’.
The social media is full of such content which usually goes largely unnoticed until there’s an event where it coincidentally fits. That’s the point where posts like this get the ‘prophesy’ status and more lies and misinformation are spread with greater conviction.