<h2 class=" eplus-wrapper" id="crosshead">Shaky foundations</h2>

On Friday 3 February, a Dutch researcher, Frank Hoogerbeets, tweeted out a map of southern TurkeyOfficially the Republic of Turkiye, a country that lies partly in Europe and partly in Asia at the east of the Mediterranean. . In the caption he wrote: "Sooner or later there will be a ~M 7.5 #earthquake in this region".

Just three days later, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.8 tore through the area, devastating large swathes of Turkey and SyriaA Middle Eastern country that was the site of much of the fighting during the Crusades..¹ Yesterday evening the death toll of the earthquake stood at more than 5,000, but most expect it to rise to as high as 10,000. Injuries are in the tens of thousands. 

Thousands of homes have been destroyed, leaving many with nowhere to go in overnight temperatures of -5C. The final tallies will likely show around half a million lives affected by the disaster.

Hoogerbeets became an overnight legend. He now has almost a million followers waiting for him to predict the next catastrophe.

But experts say he just got lucky. Hoogerbeets is an advocate of the fringe scientific theory that earthquakes are correlated with the alignment of the planets. Critics say it is no more scientific than astrologyThe study of the movements of the sun, moon and planets and the belief that they affect people's personalities and lives. .

So why are so many people willing to believe in him? Some think that the more calamities we face, the more we cling to the promise of certainty.

Recent years have seen wild instability around the world. Covid-19 shut much of the world down. Russia invaded Ukraine and triggered a global economic meltdown. China and the USA are still inching closer to conflict.

In the face of so many catastrophes laying waste to people's lives, there is little wonder we want to believe that we might have a chance of predicting and even averting them.

Even if the alignment of the planets cannot tell us when a disaster will take place, some are still bullish about our ability to predict them.

One of the most influential groups claiming it can see catastrophes coming is the superforecasters.

Superforecasting is the science of using statistics to predict what is going to happen in the future. Rather than stating outright whether or not things will happen, superforecasters usually work in terms of probability.

For example, they predict there is a 90% chance that there will be no general election in Britain this year. Thankfully, there is only a 5% chance that Russia will use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine.

Superforecasters have had some successes. A research unit at the University of Pennsylvania predicted Donald Trump's election victory in 2016 using their methods.

Critics think this is all just an intellectual fad. Superforecasters might have confidence in their own abilities, they say, but their approach is really just guesswork dressed up as science.

Part of the problem is that their forecasts are unfalsifiableCannot be proved false. . For example, a superforecaster might state that there is a 90% chance of an earthquake. 

Then if one does take place, they can use this as proof that their forecast saw what was coming. But if there is no earthquake, they can claim that their forecast was still correct - it is just that sometimes, the unlikely does happen.

Yes: Nothing ever comes completely out of the blue. There are always signs that we can pick up on in advance and use to predict things that will happen. We should go about this scientifically.

No: The universe is a random place. However much knowledge we collect about how our world works, it will always find ways to surprise us.

Or... We can never say anything more than "x is more likely to happen than y". That can be useful, but we need to make sure we do not put too much faith in our predictions, as there will always be random, unforeseen events.

Turkey - Officially the Republic of Turkiye, a country that lies partly in Europe and partly in Asia at the east of the Mediterranean.

Syria - A Middle Eastern country that was the site of much of the fighting during the Crusades.

Astrology - The study of the movements of the sun, moon and planets and the belief that they affect people's personalities and lives.

Unfalsifiable - Cannot be proved false.