The research article titled “The Eschatian Hypothesis” explains that the first detection of an astrophysical object is usually not representative of the overall type.

Instead, we first tend to detect things with large observational signatures, due to our detection methods and their biases. The history of astronomy is full of examples. The history of exoplanet detection illustrates the phenomenon. The very first exoplanets were found in the early 1990s orbiting pulsars. But now we know that those were not representative. In the NASA Exoplanet Archive of more than 6,000 exoplanets, fewer than 10 were found around pulsars. They were detected because pulsars are like exquisitely timed cosmic lighthouses, and orbiting exoplanets altered that exquisite timing noticeably. It had nothing to do with how plentiful these types of planets are. For decades, science fiction writers have tried their best to prepare us for eventual contact with aliens. Their efforts are dominated by several recurrent tropes. There’s the invasion by a warlike species, there’s the highly evolved species trying to communicate with our primitive species, there’s the benevolent aliens come to save us from ourselves, and there’s the mischievous anal-probers and medical experimenters. But those examples are highly unlikely to represent first contact, according to new thinking and research. Not just because they may be totally unrealistic, but because of what might motivate another species to contact us, and how that alters the observational signal they use to announce their presence.