  Unfortunately, working scientists sometimes reflexively continue to use "buzz
phrases" grounded in once prevalent paradigms that have been subsequently
refuted. This can impede both earthquake research and hazard mitigation.
Well-worn seismological buzz phrases include "earthquake cycle," "seismic
cycle," "seismic gap," and "characteristic earthquake." They all assume that
there are sequences of earthquakes that are nearly identical except for the
times of their occurrence. If so, the complex process of earthquake occurrence
could be reduced to a description of one "characteristic" earthquake plus the
times of the others in the sequence. A common additional assumption is that
characteristic earthquakes dominate the displacement on fault or plate boundary
"segments." The "seismic gap" (or the effectively equivalent "seismic cycle")
model depends entirely on the "characteristic" assumption, with the added
assumption that characteristic earthquakes are quasi-periodic. However, since
the 1990s numerous statistical tests have failed to support characteristic
earthquake and seismic gap models, and the 2004 Sumatra earthquake and 2011
Tohoku earthquake both ripped through several supposed segment boundaries.
Earthquake scientists should scrap ideas that have been rejected by objective
testing or are too vague to be testable.

Geophysics;Applications