An interesting snippet from David Brooks' latest column:
Research by Donald A. Redelmeier and Sheldon M. Singh has found that, on average, Oscar winners live nearly four years longer than nominees that don’t win.
Interesting...but wrong. The paper he's referring to - which looked at screenwriters specifically - reached exactly the opposite conclusion:
A total of 850 writers were nominated; the median duration of follow up from birth was 68 years; and 428 writers died... life expectancy was 3.6 years shorter for winners than for nominees.
UPDATE: Brooks was referring to a different paper by the same guys, one that does indeed say what he says it does. So I got it wrong. I hate it when that happens. See comments for details. And follow link to the paper itself.
They have another paper on actors and actresses: http://www.annals.org/content/134/10/955.short. This is probably the one to which David Brooks was referring: "Life expectancy was 3.9 years longer for Academy Award winners than for other, less recognized performers (79.7 vs. 75.8 years; P = 0.003)."
Posted by: Cheryl | March 30, 2010 at 06:40 PM
Damn! Brooks was RIGHT! Thanks Cheryl - excellent sleuthing, I hadn't spotted that.
Posted by: Ian Leslie | March 30, 2010 at 06:43 PM