survivorship bias

plural survivorship biases

1. countableuncountableA form of selection bias in which only the people or things that "survived" some process are considered, while those that did not are inadvertently overlooked because of their lack of visibility.

   Kelly argued that existing literature on cult survival often draws upon retrospective studies of religious groups which suffer from survivorship bias, as surviving cults are easier to observe than defunct cults.

   2025 November 4, Thomas Kelly, “Debunking “When Prophecy Fails””, in Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, volume 62, number 1, →DOI, →ISSN, page 3