On: You and Your Research (1986)

[psychomugs]

The survivorship bias here reflects the positive-results bias in research itself. One neither wants to nor can publish negative results, despite their potential to be more valuable than massaged and hacked positive results.

Not only is this unfair to unlucky research paths, but it also breeds a social media-like positive feedback loop wherein the individual researcher feels alone in failure.

[anonymouskimmer → psychomugs]

> wherein the individual researcher feels alone in failure.

When thanks to them not publishing their failure, there will probably be a few others who fail the exact same way on the exact same research idea.