Talk:Survivorship bias

Arts, Manufacturing, Architecture, Careers
I have added 4 new categories of examples to this article, but I have not added any supporting sources. I would appreciate help in that regard. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ZippyDan (talk • contribs) 16:16, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Excellent, excellent article.

Joseph Banks Rhine
I don't understand this example. It seems to suggest that because the experiment focused on "strong telepaths", it achieved better results. If telepathy does not exist, selecting subjects for their telepathic abilities shouldn't influence the outcome? Joepnl (talk) 22:33, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

innovation and patents
I would speculate, based on what i know of biotechnology, that the claimed role of patents as an aid to innovation, is an example of survivorship bias. We hear, loudly, companies tht make a lot of money from patents, but we don't hear from the failed or never started projects. One can see this clearly in academic research; methods that are not protected (two hybrid, GFP) become popular, because, unprotected by patents, innovation can flourish. however, i don't have any data suitable for wiki pedia, these are just my thoughts. I agree that the Rhine section could be re worked to make clearer.Cinnamon colbert (talk) 15:53, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Charles Barkley
The former NBA player Charles Barkley is surprisingly insightful on a few issues, and is one of the few celebrities to mention Survivorship Bias (although not by name).

He refers to the fact that the media highlight life stories such as his own, but don't have hour long biographies of the 99% who fail to become NBA players. He then gives the morale that children should stay in school and strive for a likely career.

Survivorship Bias is responsible for the horrible media phrase "follow your dreams" which is promoted by all other celebrities and media spokesmen.

This is disastrous for the 99% who don't become sports starts, don't become rock and roll stars or movie stars, and don't make the Olympic team - not to mention those who make the Olympic team and then fail to win medals. We never will see the Olympic Broadcast feature on all the people who spend most of their life failing to achieve any success.

I'm encouraged to see that this phenomenon is recognized by Wikipedia (and waiting for the "Follow your dreams" people to delete it :) ).

Cats
The first sentence of the cats section is contradicted by the second sentence. The entire first paragraph makes no sense at all. --68.147.12.89 (talk) 21:33, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I think this comment was just misreading the text. I went back to the version just before this comment was made and it was fine. My guess is the phrase "leading to less severe injuries in cats who have fallen from six or more stories" was being read as "leading to less severe injuries than cats who have fallen from six or more stories". 199.127.114.114 (talk) 11:14, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

I don't see how this is an example of survival bias at all. The quote is explicitly about cats who survived, so it obviously ignores cats who didn't. Further, it stands to reason that if falling from greater heights is generally more dangerous, not only would we see a larger percentage of deaths, we would also see greater average injuries in the survivors. So it seemingly defies reason that we would see lower average injuries in the survivors unless there's some mechanism by which cats are safer from larger heights (noting that safer is relative to 5 to 6 stories -- not to not falling).

The Straight Dope citation given isn't a reliable source (they're a primary source for a hypothesis they made up with zero confirmation), and is mostly trying to get the point across that it doesn't matter if 40 stories is safer than 5 stories; it matters that falling isn't inherently safe, even for cats.

Most importantly, the Straight Dope's conclusion doesn't even make sense. After terminal velocity, there's no reason additional height should cause additional damage. So there's no reason to expect fewer cats to survive falls from the additional height. So there's no reason to suspect survivor bias plays a role here. At worst, we would expect falls from above 5 to 6 stories to simply stop getting worse. 199.127.114.114 (talk) 11:14, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Porpoises
It is "well known" that porpoises (bottle-nose dolphins) rescue drowning swimmers by helpfully pushing them towards the shore. The fate of swimmers pushed (unhelpfully) the other direction is unrecorded.

Some enterprising Wikipedian might attempt to dredge up actual reports or studies of rescues and non-rescues. I lack the time and the inclination. Snezzy (talk) 10:11, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Evolution
Would it be worth mentioning that the theory of evolution is a form of survivorship bias? Basically, because some features are favored by evolution those are actually the features that survived on a grand scope. 12.246.109.18 (talk) 01:10, 22 April 2017 (UTC) Snezzy (talk) 10:58, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

History
The philosopher who was questioned regarding paintings of those who had escaped shipwreck was Diagoras of Melos, not Diogenes. This can be verified by reading the text, [https://archive.org/stream/denaturadeorumac00ciceuoft/denaturadeorumac00ciceuoft_djvu.txt De Natura Deorum, III. xxxvi.— xxxvii. ] 24.50.227.197 (talk) 02:21, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

In the military
The main thrust of this section, that researchers before Wald had made recommendations without taking survivorship bias into account, is not supported by any of the sources. This may or may not be true. The study cited (a primary source) was an attempt to draw conclusions knowing that access to downed aircraft was limited or nonexistent. The other citation does not suggest that this was a unique insight, but rather that Wald's use of statistical techniques to mitigate the problem was groundbreaking. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.86.10.125 (talk) 21:51, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

I agree with the comment above and have found and added the original source of this anecdote. (The original source is identified in this article on Wald: (http://www.ams.org/publicoutreach/feature-column/fc-2016-06) Based on the original source, I also corrected an error. The original source does not mention the Center for Naval Analyses, nor does any original source related to Wald's work, other than the fact that the Center for Naval Analyses published his papers.Natsecguy (talk) 17:51, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

Questions
< the bombers that had been shot down were not present for the damage assessment.[citation needed] >

Why is a citation needed? Isn't the text a statement of the bleedin' obvious?

86.141.61.238 (talk) 05:46, 17 April 2019 (UTC)


 * The full statement is: Wald noted that the study only considered the aircraft that had survived their missions—the bombers that had been shot down were not present for the damage assessment.[citation needed]
 * As noted in the section above (In the military), the cited study doesn't seem to support the statements that Wald said this. It's not about the truth of the statement, just whether previous studies neglected to realize this simple truth.
 * This is why the previous [citation needed] tag is there as well: because there's no evidence a previous study suggested better armor for the parts of the plane that survived hits. 199.127.114.114 (talk) 10:52, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Brodie helmets
I haven't been able to find any sources for this; it gets mentioned often in the context of survivorship bias, but is conspicuously absent from any articles discussing the Brodie helmet, including the Wikipedia article, and never has even a name attached to it, unlike the aircraft example. Hexadecima (talk) 00:47, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

In disability and difficult diseases
Stories of great achievements by disabled people or who suffered difficult diseases, is sometimes cited as inspirational role models, in media and classroom. This includes Stephen Hawking, Anatoli Bugorski, Mark Inglis, and many other people. Similar happens with savant stereotype of autism. Sometimes it has a connotation that if a person with a disability or a difficult disease can achieve it, why an ordinary people won't be able to achieve it. But what is missed, is how many other people with similar disability or diseases remain unemployed or unsuccessful or socially challanged in compared to the general population. 2409:4061:70B:F80:C4AC:3DA3:CDEF:B9F5 (talk) 15:16, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

I don't know that this is really the same thing as survivorship bias. This makes the section about inspiration porn and disability stand out from the rest of the article, because it is really describing something more akin to Availability heuristic, because there is no statistical assessment that is being skewed as a result of the bias. Rather it is general perceptions of the public arriving at false conclusions due to the phenomenon. If anything, the reference included only highlights this--showing that the misconception exists specifically in the eyes of the public, NOT in published research or statistics. For this reason, I don't believe this section belongs in this article. I would highly suggest moving it to Availability heuristic as a great example of that phenomenom, though. 76.174.113.253 (talk) 21:24, 19 April 2023 (UTC) Laced8

Framed quotes of successful CEOs in a public library
I may be missing something obvious here. Can anyone explain how this is relevant to the article? The choice of quotes is obviously biased towards those from successful entrepreneurs. Is the suggestion that there should be an equal number of quotes from the unsuccessful ones? --Graham Phillips 110 (talk) 21:46, 23 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Possibly related to the nearby text: "advice about commercial success distorts perceptions of it by ignoring all of the businesses and college dropouts that failed". The leap of logic perhaps being that many people who have failed were following the "advice" of the quotes too. However, this isn't said, or sourced to be said in the article, so the image seems pointless, and at best, confusing. I think it should be removed. (Hohum @ ) 00:44, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

terrible crappy article
esp the intro, full of jargon and complex writing and no simple examples everything wrong with wikipedia, IMO — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.245.17.105 (talk) 15:37, 27 October 2022 (UTC)


 * And again the typical bias against the paranormal. Possibly Rhine was biased, but anyway modern psi research takes account of such objection.  I'd add this point to the article, but that would be pointless as the team would instantly revert the page. Brian Josephson (talk) 16:34, 27 May 2023 (UTC)