[crpatino]

You cannot make sense of an emerging phenomenon by looking at century old records of superficially similar phenomena.

The 3 year old case sounds like an outlier, regular coyotes getting at an unprotected child.

The case of the 19 year old may be the canary on the coal mine. A fully grown adult should have scared off the coyotes, but that's not how it happened. We should be asking what was different in this case and why the expectations were not met.

[bleakcabal]

I don't see how you can call 1 case an emerging phenomenon. More over that there haven't been any other cases since.

I don't think we should be afraid, as the OP mentioned, of coyotes stalking our children in the parks because of one isolated incident.

[crpatino]

> I don't see how you can call 1 case an emerging phenomenon. More over that there haven't been any other cases since.

It is really easy, you start with one model of reality, then a piece of evidence comes that does not seem to fit the model.

The first step is to formulate hypothesis that explain that gap between the theory and the practice. Normally, the next step would involve gathering evidence that disproofs each hypothesis, and whichever you cannot disproof, it is the real explanation (which either will confirm your model or provide raw material to refine). Since I have no strong incentive to investigate this particular cases, I will just let be.

However, what I pointed out in my first comment is this: If you brush under the carpet every piece of evidence that do not seem to fit your model, you will end up with a broken model and a very bumpy carpet.

[kenbellows]

> you start with one model of reality, then a piece of evidence comes that does not seem to fit the model

This is not emergence of a new phenomenon, this is an outlier[0]. There are always outliers. Claiming that a new phenomenon is emerging necessarily implies multiple data points to distinguish it from isolated statistical anomalies, which will otherwise be regarded as simple outliers caused by factors isolated to that incident.

There's an important difference between "brushing under the carpet evidence that does not seem to fit your model" and simply regarding such evidence, tentatively and in the short term, as an expected statistical anomaly until there is sufficient data to recognize a trend. There is no trend here, and until there is, it is completely reasonable to treat isolated incidents as outliers.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlier