The Dangers of Herd Mentality

After the attacks over the past six months on airports in Brussels and Istanbul and on a beachfront in Nice, people are understandably on edge. Some 40 people were hurt on the evening of Aug. 14 in the French resort town of Juan-les-Pins when vacationers, mistaking firecrackers for gunshots, caused a stampede in their effort to flee what they thought was a terrorist attack. An ocean away on the same night, police evacuated two terminals at John F. Kennedy International Airport in response to reports of shots fired. The Federal Aviation Administration implemented a ground stop at the airport, diverting flights and causing significant travel delays. Within a few hours, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey announced that it had found no evidence of gunfire in the terminal, and the airport returned to normal operations. But in the interim, thousands of passengers had been forced out of...