Survivorship bias at its finest
this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2025
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And yet, there are loads of studies testing things like specific therapy techniques where 2 thirds of the people trying it dropped out, and those who stayed show a tiny marginal improvement. And no mention at all of survivorship bias?! Like if the thing is not working or making my problems worse, I’m more likely to drop out.
But the people doing the study seem to either be oblivious or willfully ignorant of this.
TBF, dealing with informative dropout is really difficult. And the best remedy we have is often... more statistics.
Check out survival analysis (quick video on the YouTube link), people dropping from studies is acknowledged and accounted.
In my field it often isn’t.
In a well done RCT of course it is. My field has crazy drop out rates and the majority of reviewers and authors don’t bat an eye.
This reminds me of "startup culture". CEOs are like "we have to move fast and break things! Look at this successful startup that did!" but don't think about the thousands of startups that also were reckless, and then failed.
Startup culture is so toxic. I'd rather give Rob Schneider daily foot massages with truffle and lavender oil than ever work for a startup again.
You say that like it would be a bad thing
ಠ_ಠ
How about a rob Schneider foot massage startup?
The average person has 1 ball and 1 teat.
The average person has less than two eyes, ears, arms, hands, legs and feet. Weird, right?
Not everywhere, though. The average Belgian has more than two hands.
explain
I'm guessing some famous belgian has more than two hands due to some genetic issue. I'm not going to look it up there cuz it seems like a porn category
The average person has one boob and one testicle.
Of course, that's because you're rounding up. On average the adult population would have one boob and one testicle, barring misadventure, medical need, or medical prophylaxis which bring down the number. Not enough people born without them are having fresh installs done to make up the difference.
Lol I have two of each
r*ssian roulette was invented with a specific free turning revolver drum in mind that makes it impossible to shoot yourself with one bullet loaded.
update: probably not a fact
Why did you censor Russian?
The intern*t is weird
Very much so
Tr*e
🌳
Tru*
🎺
T*ue
👨🍳 (only the hat)
I had to google chef's hat to find out that Toque also exists as a word in my native language
They're an ostrich?
Makes sense
Don’t think this is true unless you can come up with a source for this. As far as I could find gravity is almost negligible effect wise and they usually stop it manually anyways. The only time I’ve heard of this was in the reacher book where he claimed to have such a well oiled revolver he was able to.
How is it impossible?
I think the one bullet in the drum will never align with the barrel due to gravity + the free-spinning drum
If you hold it right.
That would be a stupid gun design, if an unevenly loaded drum means you can't shoot anymore (or would have to manually align the bullet with the barrel - good luck! Who needs fingers anyway, amirite).
You got a sauce on that?
tbh I've had it somewhere, but can't find it among thousands of bookmarks. So it probably can't be called a fact.
No worries. Wasn't trying to be a dick. Always up for learning something new about interesting things.
I grew up around firearms. Use a .22 revolver as part of varmint management on my little farm. It's a tool not a fetish. (I like all sorts of tools, including firearms.) Lots of myths about guns, for instance: they don't actually increase the size of your penis.
No way! I was looking for AR-15 just for growing reasons. 🥲
I must admit, I inherited my uncle's 1911 that he used for competition. It might give me a little chub. Pretty sure it increases my height as well. 😁
Statistics don't lie.
You're thinking of hips.
Statistics don't hips?
Only 500 people answered the poll.