(image source: https://www.renesonneveld.com/post/survivorship-bias-what-is-your-perspective)
During World War II, fighter planes would come back from battle with bullet holes. The Allies found which areas of the airplanes were most commonly hit by enemy fire and planned to reinforce those areas. However, a mathematician named Abraham World proposed that perhaps there was a more important way to look at the data: perhaps the reason that there were no bullet holes in certain areas of the planes that returned was because those airplanes who were shot in those areas simply didn’t return. This insight led to the planes being reinforced in the areas where there were no bullet holes, rather than where there were many. Sometimes the surviorship bias misleads us as we’re designed to focus on what we do see instead of what we don’t see. More details here.
Although our research is unlikely to involve survival in this way, we can apply the same principle. Rather than asking the question “Why are students always plagiarizing this one specific assignment?” We might ask “Why don’t students ever plagiarize this other assignment?” Perhaps that assignment is more difficult to plagiarize due to structure/requirements, or they have more time to complete it/don’t feel rushed because it’s scheduled for a less busy time of the semester, or perhaps there are in-process marks/components. These are all valid avenues to investigate, so focusing on the absence of plagiarism can help us better understand plagiarism behaviours than focussing on the instances of plagiarism themselves.
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