Funny, I just recommended Antifragile by Nassim Taleb to my book club, and of course, that idea is pretty much the perfect foil to this.
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When it was really the case that the spots that weren't damaged were the ones that actually needed to be armored, because the planes that took damage there didn't come back.
In this case, the data that survived a selection process ("I just recommended this book that dovetails nicely") is the only data considered, when really all of the data needs to be considered.
I'm seeing this as "you're reading the data wrong" or more accurately "you're barking up the wrong tree"