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In June 2016, scientists led by a doctoral candidate at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa released the results of a data analysis they did on the motion of the earth's crust. The study described how data backed existing earthquake prediction models, showing that the ground around the San Andreas fault is slowly rising and sinking. From the study's abstract: To clarify: the study is showing that — once data noise is stripped from the analysis — that the researchers who worked on this study were able to isolate and better understand data about vertical movement, which — in their own words — is a persistently enigmatic part of earthquake prediction. What the study didn't show was that an earthquake was about to happen, which was apparently overlooked by headline writers (e.g. Large Scale Motion Seen at San Andreas — Is the Big Quake Coming?) and social media pundits. The press release that was issued along with the study explained further: However, eager writers evidently didn't look past the press release's headline (New analysis reveals large-scale motion around San Andreas Fault System) or they would have seen that the motion is a feature, not a bug: The San Andreas fault has been the subject of myth and speculation for decades, particularly for Californians, for whom earthquake prediction is a popular armchair sport. The fault occasionally slips, causing tremors that radiate well beyond the region, and there is quite a lot of science to support the idea that there will, eventually, be another very big, very powerful earthquake that originates from it (rivaling the 1906 quake that leveled San Francisco). However, this paper isn't a dire warning; it's just another tool that earthquake researchers can add to their kit in order to better predict when the next Big One might be.
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