Winners live on average two years longer than nominees.
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I am reminded of an article in the Sept. 2006 Annals of Internal Medicine,(vol. 145, #5,pg 361 by Slvester et al) that seemed to contradict an earlier Annals article that claimed that Oscar winners lived 3.9 years longer than non-winners.Comments by the Editors indicated that statistics experts cannot agree on how to do such analysis regarding when to “start the clock” The statistical arguments eluded my understanding but I wonder if a similar thing is going on here.
The snippet of a story mentions that ‘corrections’ for the confounders were made, but no raw data or nature of such corrections are offered.
Always be very suspicious of data that has been ‘corrected’ for confounders.
The most obveous difference that might have existed was the age of the winners vs the non-winning nominees at the time of the award. If the winners were systematically older (accomplishing great things sometimes takes more time than accomplishing less great things) then longer life is expected merely because the older individual has already successfully avoided mortality hazards that the younger person still has to clear.
By example, at age 42 I had a life expectancy of 64 years at the time of my birth. Someone born in 1944 had a life expectancy of only 60 years. Yet if I compare myself to that living 82 year old now his life expectancy is 88 and mine only 73. The discrepancy exists because this old guy has been selected (natural selection) to be the strongest and luckiest of his generation. Just to reach his age I need to dodge 40 years of heart disease, cancer, stroke and all other risks; quite a daunting challenge.
So if this little confounder was overlooked or ‘corrected’ for incorrectly, that 1.3 year difference in life might not exist at all.
The snippet of a story mentions that ‘corrections’ for the confounders were made, but no raw data or nature of such corrections are offered.
Always be very suspicious of data that has been ‘corrected’ for confounders.
The most obveous difference that might have existed was the age of the winners vs the non-winning nominees at the time of the award. If the winners were systematically older (accomplishing great things sometimes takes more time than accomplishing less great things) then longer life is expected merely because the older individual has already successfully avoided mortality hazards that the younger person still has to clear.
By example, at age 42 I had a life expectancy of 64 years at the time of my birth. Someone born in 1944 had a life expectancy of only 60 years. Yet if I compare myself to that living 82 year old now his life expectancy is 88 and mine only 73. The discrepancy exists because this old guy has been selected (natural selection) to be the strongest and luckiest of his generation. Just to reach his age I need to dodge 40 years of heart disease, cancer, stroke and all other risks; quite a daunting challenge.
So if this little confounder was overlooked or ‘corrected’ for incorrectly, that 1.3 year difference in life might not exist at all.
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