I've been critical of Christopher Neff on this very blog in the past, indeed, I still hate the Erich Ritter invented "shark accident" nonsense which was the thing which brought him to my attention a couple of years back however, that aside, his paper at the time, regarding the politics of shark bites had some great stuff in it, he seems a nice fella and on top of all that, he's still the only person in the history of this blog to have the balls to discuss points raised herein, using his own name, in a public arena and I respect him for that, if only more people shared his candour.
Last week I saw a short piece written by Neff relating to the supposed increase in shark attacks/bites (not accidents, it's never an "accident") and it's really very good, especially this bit;
"Shark bites fall into a special statistical category known as “random, independent events”. This means that the likelihood that a shark bite will happen at a given time and place does not depend on when or where the last one happened. Just like a like a coin toss, if you get heads on the first time, you still only have a 50-50 chance of heads on the next flip.
Yet shark bites often do not look independent or random. Their nature makes them look like intent-based incidents. Any increase in frequency can also look like part of a new pattern, despite these events being independent, random and rare. As a result, the public understandably wants these vivid and frightening incidents stopped, and the government wants to diagnose a problem so it can come up with a solution."
You can read the full piece here.
Bravo!
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