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Oster added another impressive item to her résumé last Sunday when the New York Times featured her theory linking the rise of witch trials to bad weather in its “Year in Ideas” article—an annual collection of “the most noteworthy ideas of the previous 12 months...
Oster’s theory, which was originally published in last winter’s Journal of Economic Perspectives, connects the period of cold weather in Europe known as the “little ice age” to an increase in witch trials from 1520 to 1770. Oster hypothesizes that after climate conditions devastated crops, Europeans looked for someone to hold accountable—eventually resulted in the burning of tens of thousands of witches...
...When economic times are bad, people look for someone to blame,” Oster explained. “The fact that there were more trials during worse weather means that witches were a scapegoat...
Oster’s theory was the result of months of research on temperature patterns and witch trial chronology. Oster said she first grew interested in witches and weather from a course she took as an undergraduate at Harvard...
...until later in her college career that she made a link between the trials and weather patterns...