The Carlin Effect

摘要

The comedian and social critic George Carlin once said, "Somewhere in the world is the world's worst doctor. And what's truly terrifying is that someone has an appointment with him tomorrow morning." Over the past few years, I have observed a phenomenon relevant to our community that adheres to the spirit of Carton's observation: a pollution source that does not pose a significant risk when evaluated on the basis of typical conditions can morph into a serious threat in a small number of cases in which abnormally high concentrations occur. Our scientific training leads us to think of contaminant releases in terms of normal or log-normal distributions. As a result, we tend to ignore or downplay outliers to the distribution. The truly terrifying consequence of this habit is that it inevitably results in some people or ecosystems being exposed to dangerous conditions tomorrow morning (and every morning thereafter).