"Hindsight bias — sometimes called the "I-knew-it-all-along" effect: the inclination to see past events as being predictable, based on knowledge of later events.
Ein Beispiel für diesen Effekt findet sich in der Betrachtung der Ereignisse von
9/11:
"Numerous examples are available for illustration, but the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger as well as the 9/11 attacks are obvious examples. In the case of the space shuttle, the fault that destroyed the vehicle was attributed to a faulty rubber "O-ring" on one of the shuttle's solid fuel boosters. After the tragedy, investigators found that this fault was reported as a potential problem, but ignored. Those affected by hindsight bias view this as practically criminal, as the fault was known long before the event, but they completely ignore the hundreds, if not thousands, of other reports that had the same probability of causing the destruction of the shuttle. In relation to the attacks on the World Trade Center, several reports of "something big" were milling around intelligence agencies; however, prior to the attack itself there were many reports of "something big", many of which led to nothing. Any assessment of how people react to information or intelligence regarding a potential event should be done without the benefit of the knowledge that the event actually happened.
Hindsight bias with events such as these makes it easy to formulate conspiracy theories by claiming that because a government "knew in advance" of an attack or similar, they let it happen. In reality, they didn't really "know in advance" at all, as the probability of something happening was low."
Siehe hierzu:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Hindsight_bias 
