@Neveracrossword
Thanks for clarifying that. My contribution to it was only going to be something along the lines of the fact that, nowadays, what was once only of local interest is now, if sufficiently weird or sickening, of interest worldwide. Heinous killings may have been happening, at a low ratevper country, for generations. Suddenly we are aware of all of them at once and it has the outward appearance of an outbreak… traceable back to a specific point in time or "causative event". What might seem to be empirical evidence gathering is, in fact, just a bad case of confirmation bias.