Protect Yourself From Silent Evidence—Learning From the Failures You Never See

History loves to focus on winners—success stories, survivors, and tales of resilience. But behind every celebrated entrepreneur, artist, or city that ‘comes back from disaster,’ there are countless silent failures or near-misses that never make the news. Economists call this ‘survivor bias,’ while historians and scientists studying risk learn to account for ‘silent evidence’—all the unseen flops, lost manuscripts, failed experiments, or casualties whose stories go unrecorded.

Studies in finance make this clear: for every hedge fund that turns a profit year after year and is lauded for its ‘genius risk-taking,’ there are dozens that disappeared silently after one bad season. In medicine, we only see testimonies from those whom a treatment helped—not those harmed or for whom it just didn’t work. The pattern repeats everywhere. The problem? If you only look at the visible survivors and ignore the hidden costs, you’ll get a wildly distorted idea of risk and reward, greatly overstate causality, and set yourself up for nasty surprises.

Working with silent evidence means adjusting your rules: look for what’s missing, not just what’s in front of you; constantly audit your plans for hidden setbacks; and ask what information your sample is missing.

Next time you read a glowing profile or success story, deliberately look for what’s missing from view. Seek out stories of failure, dropouts, or plans that fizzled, and build invisible costs and risks into your next plan—rather than assuming the visible evidence is the whole truth. When reflecting on a team or personal win, ask what close calls or hidden casualties were involved. This makes for stronger, less naive decision-making—and maybe a little more gratitude, too.