When Bin Laden was brought to justice, one retrospective view could have corroborated the findings of a geographer (or maybe not). UCLA geopgrapher, Thomas Gillespie, and a team of undergraduates had undertaken an academic transposing the methods of "island biogeography" to Bin Laden's whereabouts. They theorised that,
Based on information from satellites and other remote sensing systems, and reports on his movements since his last known location, the students created a probabilistic model of where he was likely to be. Their prediction of a town was based on a geographical theory called “island biogeography”: basically, that a species on a large island is much less likely to go extinct following a catastrophic event than a species on a small one.
Therefore, Bin Laden was probably hiding out in a large town, rather than a small one. The correlation with Bin Laden's actual location has led to 20/20 vindication of these results. Since such extensions of theory are rarely satisfactory, why is this result statistically significant.
If we are just beginning to understand how individuals react to general economic behaviour, How convincing is it that a theory could explain the success of one of the biggest manhunts in history. Is it not more likely that Bin Laden was unable to move too far from his base of support and original location due to teh fear of being found and caught?
I do agree that Bin Laden met an extinction event following a personal catastrophe for him (a satisfying outcome for the rest of us).