So it looks like I am not the only one to think of the issue of finding a power law distribution is very weak on drawing inference from empirical data. Surely there must be the same level of skepticism for Benford's law and the other interesting laws. Mark Newman shows why this should be the case for different physical and sociological processes (like the several scenarios modeling extinction). The terrorism paper is very close to an analysis Paul Nelson and I wanted to get funded some years ago. I am glad somebody did it.
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