Car Talk recently had a puzzler that involved another example of (literal) survivor bias:
It’s World War II, an RAF airfield north of London. A dimly lit Quonset hut filled with air crews just returned from bombing runs over Germany.
The meeting opens with the chaplain leading the men in prayer for their lost comrades. He is followed by the flight operations chief, who begins the debriefing by asking the airmen, “From what direction were you attacked by the German fighter planes?”
Without hesitation or dissent, the reply was, “From above and behind.”
As in our previous example of this (which also involved world war II pilots…), the problem is that they are only interviewing the survivors.
