Negative evaluation
During the Tangshan earthquake, he was responsible for earthquake situation analysis and prediction, and was the main official of the earthquake department. It is reported that the earthquake prediction information was intensively reported within one month before the Tangshan earthquake, which seriously ignored the earthquake situation, postponed the earthquake consultation for many times, and suppressed the Tangshan earthquake prediction, resulting in the Tangshan people not taking preventive measures, resulting in more than 240,000 deaths. After the earthquake, he fabricated lies and deceived the central authorities, saying that "earthquakes are unpredictable", and abolished all effective prediction methods before the earthquake, suppressed scientists and earthquake forecasters who made predictions and covered up the truth for 30 years; China's earthquake prediction method is backward rather than advanced.
After the Tangshan earthquake, Mei concealed the truth from the CPC Central Committee and lied that the Tangshan earthquake was unpredictable. Then he used the sudden change of political situation in China to shift the blame, participated in framing Comrade Wang Chengmin who adhered to the line of mass monitoring and mass prevention, correctly detected the approaching earthquake danger, and demanded that the masses be mobilized to master the earthquake precursors, forcing Comrade Wang Chengmin's family to break up and his wife to divorce, which was a great blow to his body and mind. Although it has been proved that earthquakes are completely predictable, Mei, as a seismologist, keeps spreading the agnosticism of earthquakes, sabotaging the work of earthquake prediction, attacking seismologists who have made outstanding contributions to China's earthquake work, especially in the Tangshan earthquake, making things difficult for them in their work, denying them funds, equipment and instruments, and even forbidding them to take students. In the past 30 years, a large number of seismologists trained during the Cultural Revolution in China have been aging.
Positive evaluation
Professor Mei is one of the founders of earthquake prediction research in China and has made outstanding contributions to the theory and practice of earthquake prediction. She is a pioneer in the application of seismic activity research to earthquake prediction practice, and the quasi-periodic activity characteristics of strong earthquake activity in time and space are still an important basis for long-term earthquake prediction research. She is a pioneer in earthquake observation and research by using the earthquake experimental site. In the practice of Xinjiang earthquake experimental site, she carried out multi-disciplinary earthquake monitoring and put forward the scientific idea of explaining the causes of earthquake precursors with the theory of plastic deformation in high stress stage and plastic hardening of medium, which is still of great significance to the construction of a new generation of earthquake experimental site.
Professor Mei is the founder of the analysis and prediction center, the predecessor of the Institute of Earthquake Prediction. As the first director of the analysis and prediction center, he actively advocated that earthquake prediction research should integrate theory with practice and closely combine scientific research, field observation and earthquake prediction tasks. Professor Mei attaches great importance to the cultivation of young people. In the third year after the establishment of the Center for Analysis and Prediction, she began to train graduate students to become a master's degree awarding unit approved by the State Council. She enrolled students herself and took the lead in setting up an introduction to earthquake prediction in the Graduate School of Chinese Academy of Sciences. Over the years, the graduate students trained by our unit have played and will continue to play an important role in the national earthquake prediction front. After retiring to the second line, Professor Mei still devoted himself to the research and practice of earthquake prediction and paid attention to the development of earthquake science.