The superpredator prediction was wrong yet its social costs proved permanent.

Evidence

Of course, Dilulio’s findings were eventually proved incorrect. His data were wrong. There were no superpredators on the horizon. He even recanted his theory in 2001. “If I knew then what I know now, I would have shouted for preventions of crimes.” The social costs and the lives ruined, however, cannot be undone. (The Central Park Five were exonerated in 2002.) White fear is the danger. Not black people. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 214

Categorization

• XREF: The gap between disproven premise and permanent harm parallels the reader’s knowledge of moral panics whose evidence collapses yet whose policy consequences persist.