This would tend to up-end the status quo, rather than support it, because (as opposed to:)
Somebody: It troubles me that the empirical truth of so many issues is conflated with their political utility. As a trivial example, the thesis of Outliers about the 10,000 hour rule could be substantially true and at the same time it could be that he or others may use that fact to support the status quo. The same issue comes up concerning neuroscience and evolutionary psychology. Just because some discovery is politically unpalatable doesn't mean it should be rejected out of hand. It's funny, in liberal circles online there's been discussion about epistemic closure on the right, but unfortunately it's a wider phenomenon than that.
For that matter, we can say to some extent what factors go into being hit by lightning. The highest rates of mortality from lightning in the U.S. occur in states like Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado. Why? Partly because they get a lot of lightning strikes in those states but also because a lot of men work outdoors in those parts of the country. And men of prime working years 20's through 40's are at highest risk of dying in a lightning strike. There was a Cuban man who got struck by lightning *five* times in his life. The factors are the same - he was a farm worker who spent his days outdoors, Cuba has a high rate of lightning strikes, and has the highest lightning mortality rate per 100,000 people in the world (more than 3 times as high as in the leading U.S. state). As an aside, if Cuba had higher agricultural productivity so that 20% of it's population weren't engaged in farming, fewer people might get killed by lightning there every year.
How not to be a lightning outlier: 1. Don't live in a region typified by frequent electrical storms. 2. Don't live in a flat area with few tall buildings 3. Don't work outdoors on a farm your whole life.