In Gardner's book The Science of Fear (http://www.amazon.com/Science-Fear-Culture-Manipulates-Brain/dp/0452295467/ref=pd_sim_b_1) he has an excellent chapter on terrorism and the effects of fear and overreaction to terrorism. He also cites a worldwide data base on the total number of people killed in terrorist attacks which is usually 300-500 annually worldwide (I do not have the book here so I cannot double check it; I'm also sure there is lots of difficulty with what counts as a terrorist attack).
Marie **************************************************** Marie Helweg-Larsen, Ph.D. Department Chair and Associate Professor of Psychology Kaufman 168, Dickinson College Carlisle, PA 17013, office (717) 245-1562, fax (717) 245-1971 Office hours: Mon/Thur 3-4, Tues 10:30-11:30 http://users.dickinson.edu/~helwegm/index.html **************************************************** -----Original Message----- From: Mike Palij [mailto:m...@nyu.edu] Sent: Tuesday, December 29, 2009 4:55 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Cc: Mike Palij Subject: RE: [tips] Stats on airplane terrorism I would like to add to Scott's point that terrorism involving commercial flights is a low probability but high impact event by pointing out that a better measure of the effect of terrorism is how many people have died from all identified instances of terrorism. As Nate Silver (see his picture in the dictionary under "nerd") points out, there has only been six incidents with commercial airlines. If this were the only empirical indicator of the effects of terrorism, then one might feel safe to ignore terrorism but that would be a foolish thing to do. Nate Silver is just doing number crunching because certain numbers are available to crunch. He doesn't go deeper and ask why is that number so low given the great impact that terrorism involving commercial airlnes has on society. The number is not small because it is a naturally low number but because huge resources have been used to keep that number low. The real question is what are the "best practices" to keep the number of terrorists events low while putting the least amount of restrictions on what people can do when flying. Other better questions for Nate to ask is "what would be the naturally occurring rate of terrorism involving commercial airliners be if there were no processes in place to prevent it?" Or "how long would it take for commercial airlines to be reduced to only a few flights a day because the probability of being involved in a terrorist event would cause people to use other means of transportation?" But this requires more than number crunching, it requires understanding the role of terrorism, how to use it effectively against a population, and how people respond to terrorist threats. I don't think Nate thinks at that level. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu On Tue, 29 Dec 2009 03:30:41 -0800, Scott O Lilienfeld wrote: All true, and I don't dispute the statistics. But there's a good reason to be (much) more concerned about terrorist attacks than lightning: lightning doesn't learn from experience. Were terrorists able to find a dependable way of bringing explosive devices on board planes with low risk of detection, all it would take is one or at most two downed commercial planes to paralyze (temporarily, one would hope) the airplane industry, national and international travel, and much of the world economy. Again, I don't dispute that the absolute risks are at present extremely low. I just wouldn't want us to leap to the unjustified conclusion that the amount of worry we should devote to such incidents should be much less than to lightning strikes, as the issues involved here are markedly different. ....Scott ________________________________ From: Paul Brandon [paul.bran...@mnsu.edu] Sent: Tuesday, December 29, 2009 1:19 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] Stats on airplane terrorism Not to mention the risks of being killed by an infected cheeseburger. We cheerfully tolerate many higher but less dramatic risks than 'terrorism'. On Dec 29, 2009, at 12:03 AM, Christopher D. Green wrote: Here are some statistics on the probability of being the (attempted) victim of terrorism on a commercial flight that may make for interesting discussion in your courses: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/12/odds-of-airborne-terror.html Here's the best bit: "the odds of being on given departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade. By contrast, the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 500,000. This means that you could board 20 flights per year and still be less likely to be the subject of an attempted terrorist attack than to be struck by lightning." --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
