> An example can make this concrete. Indeed it can. Why, if there were really effects as large as you claim -- where several hundred thousands of dollars of va

> An example can make this concrete. Indeed it can. Why, if there were really effects as large as you claim -- where several hundred thousands of dollars of value are lost in a single incident -- then society would recognize that fact. We would have formed "Fire Departments" consisting of professionals skilled at minimizing the damage. We would have created "Homeowner's Insurance" as a way of distributing the harmful effects throughout society instead of concentrating it on a few. It is precisely because we DO observe these behaviors that we can nod and say "Yep, those 'outliers' are to be expected. On the other hand, if you had never heard a story about an entire house being destroyed in a single incident and someone tried to tell you that the statistics showed it was possible, even likely... wouldn't you stop to ask questions? Wouldn't you feel like a well-done paper on the subject needed to address possible mechanisms by which the information might be less well-known?