Talk:Jim Berkland

Intro text

The article begins:

"Jim Berkland is a retired geologist who worked many years for the U.S. Geological Survey. He was also the first County Geologist for Santa Clara County (in northern California) and was in that position for twenty-one years."

According to his own web page (http://www.syzygyjob.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13&Itemid=27), he worked for the USGS for six years. It seems odd and misleading to begin the description of his career with "worked many years for the U.S. Geological Survey." when it was a small fraction of his career.

A more neutral introduction would be:

"Jim Berkland is a retired geologist who worked as the first County Geologist in northern California's Santa Clara County for twenty-one years. He also worked for the U.S. Geological Survey for six years." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.137.165.103 (talk) 18:48, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

I've revised the intro in the direction of neutrality, I hope. --Chonak (talk) 04:01, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Any reason why his bio does not begin the way most do on Wikipedia?

Career

Berkland's claims to have predicted earthquakes are controversial among scientists because they are so vague.

It must be difficult to give an example, said example being vague?

Weatherlawyer (talk) 09:17, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

It is not true that Berkland predicted a "major" earthquake in his interview of October 13, 1989. The news reports cited in this article say that he predicted on October 12, 1989 that an earthquake of magnitude 3.5 to 6.5 would occur in Northern California during the World Series. A magnitude 3.5 earthquake barely makes the news, and so neither do the failures of most of Berkland's predictions. The Loma Prieta earthquake of October 17, 1989 was magnitude 6.9, outside the predicted range of magnitudes. Densely (talk) 16:13, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. A recent Gilroy Dispatch article gives the figures as 3.5 to 6.0 [1], so I will revise accordingly. By the way, did you intend to revert the other recent changes I made? I rearranged the material about professional associations, and cleaned up External Links, but those edits have been undone. --Chonak (talk) 05:34, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

No, I meant to change only the introduction and the Career section. I'm not sure how the other parts were changed. Perhaps it should be you rather than me who restores them. Densely (talk) 07:06, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks; I've brought back the cleaned-up versions of "Media appearances" and "External links" from a prior version. --Chonak (talk) 08:48, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

You are discussing magnitudes with no real definition of them. It is unlikely that he would have specified the exact scale on a talk show.

Weatherlawyer (talk) 09:17, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

Honors?

The "Honors" section reads more like a resume than anything of encyclopedic value. Membership of various professional societies and associations does not constitute "honors". Kkbay (talk) 01:39, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Good point. I have modified the section header and reduced the content into a paragraph. --Chonak (talk) 05:26, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

I removed the "Who's Who" listing as they are all vanity publications which list anyone who pays their fee, not professional associations or honors. 76.218.69.148 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 06:16, 20 March 2011 (UTC).

Bendandi

A paragraph about similar theories by Italian earthquake researcher Raffaele Bendandi says:

there was an Italian with a similar method: Raffaele Bendandi, that in 1919 believed that the earth's crust, as well as the tides, is subject to the effects of gravitational attraction of the Moon. His hypothesis for the prediction of earthquakes (never recognized by the scientific community, because he did not want to ever give formal exposure) is based on the idea that the Moon, other planets of the Solar System and the Sun are not the cause movements of the earth's crust , which according to his theory actually deforms and pulses with timing and rhythm-dependent position of celestial bodies within the solar system.

This paragraph is unsourced, and is really about Bendandi, not Berkland, so I have moved it here to the Talk page for review. -- Chonak (talk) 02:07, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

The biggest problem to the detractors of his ideas is that the moon is always there. Perhaps a formal discussion out the exact lines of symmetry involved in his use of the term syzygy could be linked to?

Weatherlawyer (talk) 09:17, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

This is not the place for a full description of Bendandi's theory, but it should be briefly noted so that readers can follow the link to Bendandi's Wiki article. I suggest something like: "Berkland's theory has some similarities to that proposed in 1919 by the Italian Raffaele Bendandi." Plazak (talk) 13:02, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

I have removed the Bendandi link as being irrelevant. It does not appear that there is any connection between the two, other than they share (among a hundred or more others) a certain approach to earthquake prediction. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 01:36, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Puff piece in support of fringe views?

In looking over Berkland's work it seems to me his only points of notability are his prediction of the Loma Prieta earthquake, and being the lynch-pin of a whole lot of pseudo-scientific crap. All of the laudatory stuff in the article makes it seem like a puff piece to support certain fringe views. Anyone interested in re-evaluating this article? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:59, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

I have taken a closer look, and tagged several problems. E.g.:

• The "over fifty scientific papers" he allegedly has published - he has said as much, but where is the verification?
• That he was suspended two months - again, self-report, with no documentation; needs a citation.
• In the note: "This data was confirmed by searching all seismic events within Berkland's timeframe" - original research. It might be noted that this does not come under WP:BLUE as confirmation of predictions - even confirmation of whether a prediction as in fact been made - is non-trivial.
• Note 8 on "Seismic Window Theory": first, that link is dead. But even so, an author's review of that author's representation of Berkland's theory is a very weak form of documenting what Berkland may have said. Pointing to some actual text would be the minimum acceptable attribution.
• The "signs and indicators that he uses for his predictions" would be more appropriate under Methodology. But still needs a specific citation for verification.

Other problems exist, including a general lack of critical examination of Berkland's theory(s) and claims (the two scientific papers cited being quite inadequate for the purpose). If no one else responds I may take a whack at some of this. Speak up now if you have any interest, as this is the best time for comments and input. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:03, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

A few problems still exist, but I have corrected or removed most of the problems while adding much more sourced content. One subtopic that could use some work are the details and nature of his suspension. Someone with access to the San Jose Mercury could that best. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 01:39, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

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Questionable edits rolled back

I have rolled-back a series of questionable edits that lack any kind of cited sources. Many of these edits are also questionable on the basis of WP:NPOV. If you want to note Berkland's passing you MUST cite a reliable source, such as a newspaper. Ask if you need help. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 04:39, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

ZenSkye: I removed your last edit because it is quite doubtful that the topics mentioned were "factors" in any earthquake. Even if you quoted precise language to that effect from the book, that book is not a reliable source regarding that kind of claim. Also, in sourcing Berkland's death please note that URLs are not adequate citations: you need to specify the details of who said it, in what venue (newspaper?), when, etc. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 01:15, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

@ZenSkye: per above please provide more details of your source. Use of a {{citation}} template is also strongly recommended. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:24, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Untitled and unsigned comment

The problem is not that his methods failed so mucha s his insights were limited to concentrating on his location and on earthquakes.

Little may now be known of how much his theories were subverted by no knowing the relationship between tropical storms and earthquake, volcanic eruptions and earthquake and volcanic eruptions and storms in general.

A contemporary of his in Coimbatore, India used a different method with a similar error based explanation. I his case the predictions were subverted by tropical storms appearing in his (larger) target region. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.23.66.170 (talk) 21:54, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

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Please explain

@J. Johnson: - Please explain this revert. I see nothing "damaged" other than your removal of archive URLs and {{dead link}} tags which are essential for dealing with Wikipedia's large-scale WP:Link rot problem. -- GreenC 01:15, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

If you will take a closer look at every edit (such as this one) where a 'dead link' was added, you might notice multiple instances of splitting parameters that had been grouped together on the same. E.g., from such as this:

|first= David |last= Deming

|first= Patrick |last= McClellan

to this:

|first= David

|last= Deming

|first= Patrick

|last= McClellan

That is a change of formatting that damages the readibility of the wikitext, and contrary to the spirit of WP:CITEVAR. As I said in my edit summary, feel free to mark a dead link. But that does not excuse this collateral damage to the rest of the citation. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 03:14, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

No. The placement of newlines in citation templates (aka expanded templates) has nothing to do with how it displays or WP:CITEVAR. Nor are bots required or responsible for maintaining custom newline configurations, they can't deal with 1000 different possibilities. This is purely your own aesthetics, and imposing it on others to point of degrading the article by deleting needed and necessary templates and links is disruptive. -- GreenC 03:29, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Your argument is essentially that what you think is important is truly important, but what I think important is not. That is quite unpersuasive. And I reject your minimization of my concerns as "purely [my] aesthetics". The "aesthetics" here bears on clarity of what is written, and goes to the prevention of error. Which I think is just as important as pruning dead-links.

You say that I should not impose my "aesthetic" preferences on others. But why should your preferences (or those of a bot programmer) be imposed on me? Note that I do not reject tagging dead-links, but in doing so you are creating collateral damage. Is that really necessary? Where is the consensus for that? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:55, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Citation "style" and WP:CITVAR

@Animalparty: I have reverted your edits because of massive violation of WP:CITEVAR, which says you should conform to the "style" of citation established in an article. Points to note:

1) Please put the full citations in the Sources section, and use short cites (Harv templates) to for the inline citation.

2) If you want to use {cite} templates (instead of {citation}) for the full citations you should add the |mode=cs2 to produce "CS2 style" formatting.

3) Please do not convert short cites to named-refs. There is absolutely no need for that.

While you might be tempted to just undo my reversion, that would be contrary to CITEVAR and could lead to a bit of a tussle. If you think it would be easier to make corrections from where you left matters, that's fine, I have no objection if you revert and then make make the needed corrections. If while you are at that you also take care of the other two inline full citations ("Fehd" and "Walsh", not your doing) that would be much appreciated. Thank you. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:10, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

@J. Johnson: Thank you for reminding me of the guideline WP:CITEVAR. I'd like to direct you to the policy WP:FIXTHEPROBLEM: "Fix problems if you can, flag or remove them if you can't. Preserve appropriate content. As long as any facts or ideas would belong in an encyclopedia, they should be retained in Wikipedia." I made good faith efforts to improve this article. I find the wholesale removal of verifiable, encyclopedic content solely because it is not formatted correctly to be destructive, counterproductive, and petty. If you spent less time making destructive removals that retard the growth of Wikipedia, that would be much appreciated. Thank you. --Animalparty! (talk) 17:11, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

@Animalparty: As I ALREADY SAID: you are free to revert my reversion. And I would have no objection, provided that you conform to the existing style of citation. By the way, this is not a matter of citations being "not formatted correctly", but of the method of citation, which (per CITEVAR) is not "petty". I would appreciate it if you would NOT MAKE PROBLEMS, not make changes that corrupt Wikipedia, and not expect others to clean-up after you. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:48, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Society for Scientific Exploration

I tagged as potentially unreliable multiple sources from Journal of Scientific Exploration published by Society for Scientific Exploration known to cater to pseudoscience. Some sources may be used as the opinion of the article's author if WP:DUE. Since I noticed that they were also marked as dead, maybe it'd be best to remove them and any material they supported, or to find better sources; something which I'll leave for interested editors to deal with. Thanks, —PaleoNeonate – 03:18, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for tagging that, I hadn't noticed the links had gone bad. As it turns out, since I last checked that issue of JSE has been made available. So I'll go fix those links, and some other cruft that has slipped in.

While I would agree that JSE is not entirely reliable, the Deming and MClellan sources are actually reviews of Orey's book, and quite critical at that. (Perhaps the citations are not clear enough about that?) At any rate, they (along with Hunter's and Prothero's articles) are the closest we have to a scientific critique of Berkland, and I deem them reliable. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:34, 15 February 2020 (UTC)