VAN, CANDIDACY AND VALIDATION WITH THE LATEST LAWS OF THE GAME AND PRECURSOR CANDIDACY AND VALIDATION, THE VAN CASE SO FAR - REPLY TO THE RE-REBUTTAL TO THE REPLY

In our preceding Reply, we indicated that Mulargia et al. [1996] made (beyond their obvious error that they checked their predictive ''rule' ' only for its ''learning period'') a number of mistakes; we also show ed that their ''rule'' does not correspond to a meaningful algorithm. Mulargia et al.'s Re-Rebuttal admits that Mulargia er al. [1996] actua lly made a number of mistakes due to a ''bug in the [Mulargia et al.'s , 1996] code'', which not only omitted from their list two (non-''pred icted'' by their ''rule'') ''large'' earthquakes (EQs), but also score d two missed (''large'') EQs as successfully ''predicted''. Furthermor e, they now admit that Mulargia et al.'s [1996] rule ''is certainly no t an efficient predictor'', in contrast to their earlier claims. The m ain issue of our present Reply is to point out that Mulargia et al., i n their Re-Rebuttal, now make a very serious error, when constructing the errors diagram: they confuse predictions of main shocks with those of the aftershocks, and hence incorrectly conclude that one can ''bui ld very simple, zero-cost predictive tools superior to VAN''. We show that their erroneous procedure leads to the following paradox: when a ''rule'' (which fails to predict all main shocks) correctly ''predicts '' a number of aftershocks, one can (incorrectly) claim that he found a predictive ''rule'' superior to the ideal prediction method; the lat ter (i.e., the ideal one), in spite of the fact that it predicts all m ain shocks, is (incorrectly) obtained to correspond to ''random predic tions''.