The total harm listed seems small for 50 years of data. Why should I care?
Don’t make the mistake of comparing anecdotes with data. The cases on this website are culled manually from news reports by a very small group of volunteers on their free time. As a result the totals do not represent any sort of scientific approach to the issues covered here, and are not even close to being comprehensive. They are only meant to be give you a rough idea of the size of the problem. In fact, we believe that the cases seen here represent a mere tip of the iceberg. Other reasons that the totals shown here could be misleading: • Linking to web-based news stories tends to favor events that have occurred in the last ten years or so. • Many relevant stories disappear from the web very quickly because they are not considered newsworthy. • Many relevant cases never make it into the news media and therefore go unnoticed here. • Dollar figures do not include lawsuits which were settled confidentially and other damages not documented publicly. • Non-English speaking countries are un
