Nassim Taleb introduced Black Swans to describe events that are unexpected, unpredictable, and characterized by extreme consequences. Examples of such events are World War I and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Since the work of Taleb, the media tend to abuse the term. During the Covid19 pandemic, many public institutions and journals referred to the virus as a Black Swan. However, the pandemic was not an unexpected event because many antecedent studies pointed out this possibility. This abuse of terminology mirrors the absence of a scientific theory of Black Swans, which is often discussed only from a qualitative point of view.
In a paper published in
Physical Review Research, researchers G. De Marzo(1,4,5), A. Gabrielli(1,2,3), A. Zaccaria(2,1), and L. Pietronero (1,2,4) addressed the challenging task of developing a scientifically grounded and quantitative approach to Black Swans.