M A S T E R P A G E
Research News,
August 1991
The Lessons of Dr. Browning
by Richard A. Kerr
When a self-taught climatologist predicted a major quake for the
Midwest, seismologists ignored him, but leaving the field to
pseudoscience proved a big mistake.
BOULDER, COLORADO—Jill Stevens want-
ed to alert millions of Midwesterners to the
earthquake threat beneath their feet. As head
of the information side of the Center for
Earthquake Research and Information at
Memphis State University, she had been warn-
ing, with limited success, that much remained
undone to protect the citizenry from rare but
lethal quakes. But to the average
Midwesterner, earthquake country stopped at
the California border, so why worry—until
the winter of 1989, when one Dr. Iben
Browning came along.
A self-taught climatologist, Browning did
Stevens’ job for her—and more. He predicted
that a catastrophic earthquake would strike the
Mississippi Valley during the first week of
December 1990. The media leaped on the pre-
diction and suddenly the populace became all
too aware of the threat. That might have been to
the good, says Stevens, except that the pre-
diction was scientifically groundless—and so
specific and apocalyptic as to provoke near-hys-
teria. Stevens recalls a 6-year-old girl whose
earthquake fears could not be soothed on the
phone, and elderly callers to her center who
worried how they would get back in their
wheelchairs after the big one struck. Schools
and factories closed on the target day, 3
December, and groups such as the Red Cross
wasted precious funds in their efforts to calm
the public.
Although ultimate responsibility for the
misleading quake prediction has to rest with
Browning (who died 3 weeks ago), Stevens and
others who gathered here last month for the
16th Annual Hazards Research and
Applications Workshop lay a healthy share of
blame at the feet of a group that wanted no
part of Browning or his prognostications: the
scientific community. “If I have any criticism,”
said Lacy Suiter, director of the Tennessee
Emergency Management Agency, “it’s why the
scientific community that had the ultimate
responsibility didn’t call Browning a quack
early on.” And it was this concern that led par-
ticipants of the meeting to hope that the next
time a bogus earthquake prediction surfaces—
and there are sure to be more—scientists will
recognize its potential for touching off a fren-
zy and promptly do their part to squelch it.
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