A direct comparison of the predicted magnitude values (Mpred) to the actual magnitude values (MEQ) of the earthquakes (EQs) is allowed only when both values, i.e., Mpred and MEQ, refer to the same scale. In view of the fact that the Seismological Institute of the National Observatory of Athens (SI-NOA) publicly announces as MEQ the ML+0.5 value (where ML the local magnitude), VAN made it clear long ago, that the predicted values Mpred (after a proper calibration) referred to ML+0.5. Therefore, a self-consistent evaluation of VAN-predictions should consist of a direct comparison of Mpred with the actual ML+0.5. Unfortunately, Wyss [1996> confuses the discussion by proceeding to a direct comparison of Mpred with Ms(PDE); this is not allowed because the values of ML+0.5 exceed, on the average, Ms(PDE) by 1.0 unit. An additional confusion arises from the fact that the relation suggested by Hamada [1993>, i.e., ML+0.5=mb+0.3, is misinterpreted by Wyss as saying Ms(PDE)=mb+0.3. These two alterations by Wyss reveal that his Figures 1 and 2 are erroneous. Wyss [1996> also criticizes VAN, because (in an early publication) Varotsos et al. [1981b> used the Preliminary Bulletin of SI-NOA, instead of the final one. First of all, the final bulletin could not be used by VAN at that time, because it appeared (more than one year) after the publication of the paper by Varotsos et al. [1981b>. Secondly, the correlation between SESs and EQs is evident, when we use consistently, either the preliminary, or the final bulletin of SI-NOA. On the other hand, Wyss [1996> claims that he could not find any correlation between EQs and SESs; we show that this is due to the fact that Wyss included, in his study, small EQs that occurred several hundreds km away from the measuring VAN station (i.e., in Albania, western Turkey, etc.), but he simultaneously deleted the small magnitude EQs that occurred very close to that station. Wyss's procedure is, of course, not acceptable and hence his Appendix B is wrong. Furthermore, Wyss's claim that VAN added 25% of events to the list, is shown to be untrue. Beyond the unusual fact that Wyss quotes ''VAN's statements'' that have never been published by VAN, the following is also noted: although Wyss [1996> uses quotation marks (in order to indicate that he reproduced exactly what VAN said), he adds critical wording to VAN statements and hence their true meaning is drastically changed. For example, Wyss states: ''Varotsos et al. [1981a> had first formulated that SESs ''occurred a few minutes before each earthquake [related to that SES>'' (Varotsos et al. [1981a>).'' Thus, Wyss leads the reader to the wrong conclusion that VAN initially claimed that SES have a lead time of a few minutes, and that VAN changed it later. However, we show that this lead time (published by VAN) referred to another type of precursor, and not to SES, but the words in brackets (which are added by Wyss) alter the true meaning of our statement. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1996