Well, does he have some theory how planetary positions play a role in earthquakes, specifically how their positions could lead to an earthquake in turkey but not peru? Is just saying "there will be an earthquake sometime in this earthquake prone region" really that insightful?
FYI: They essentially murdered Semmelweis for not having a theory for how washing hands after examining cadavers and before delivering babies could save lives. He sadly came up with this nutty idea a few decades before we had germ theory and such.
There's a difference between that, where a small additional step improved safety, and this, where the credibility of the prediction would need to be assessed to be able to mobilize the wide response which would be needed ahead of time.
It reads like he had a cognitive degenerative disorder, not that he was committed to an institution for questioning the scientific establishment or whatever
That's not how it sounds to me at all. It sounds to me like no matter what he did, he couldn't escape open hostility to his idea -- based on research where he was a physician in charge of two clinics with different mortality rates -- and was hounded and then punished for failing to cave to social pressure to recant his "nutty" idea.
The world was smaller then. Getting away from toxic social patterns was likely even harder than it is now.
