Dr.Rablen and Dr.Oswald have just published a study which concludes that Nobel science laureates live significantly longer than those of their colleagues who were nominated for a prize, but failed to receive one. They work with data from 1901 to 1950, and the search is restricted to men (to avoid differences in life span between the sexes), and those killed prematurely are eliminated. That gave them 135 prize winners and 389 also-rans.
The theory they were testing was that status itself, rather than the trappings of status, such as wealth, act to prolong life. This idea was first declared by Sir Michael Marmot, of University College, London. Sir Michael studied the health of British civil servants and discovered, contrary to his and everyone else’s expectations, that those at the top of the hierarchy — whom the stress of the job was expected to have affected adversely — were actually far healthier than the supposedly unstressed functionaries at the bottom of the heap. Subsequent research has confirmed this result, and suggested it is nothing to do with the larger salaries of those at the top. But Dr.Rablen and Dr.Oswald thought it would be interesting to reline the observation still further, by studying individuals who were all, in a sense, at the top. By comparing people good enough to be considered for a Nobel, they could measure what the status of having one was worth.
Comparing winners and also-rans from within the same countries, to avoid yet another source of bias, Dr.Rablen and Dr.Oswald found that the winners lived, on average, two years longer than those who had merely been nominated. Exactly what causes this increased longevity is unclear. It is not the cash, though. The inflation-adjusted value of the prize has fluctuated over the years, so the two researchers were able to see if the purchasing power of the money was correlated with longevity. It was not.
With the hierarchically ordered individuals studied by Sir Michael and his successors, both medical records and experiments on animals suggest stress hormones are involved. It is, indeed, more stressful to be at the bottom than the top, even if being at the top involves making decisions on the fate of nations. The result Dr.Rablen and Dr.Oswald have come up with, though, suggests a positive effect associated with high status, rather than the absence of a negative effect, since unsuccessful nominees never know that they have been nominated.
A similar effect has been noted once before, in a different held. Research published a few years ago by Donald Redelmeier and Sheldon Singh showed that Oscar winning actors and actresses live 3.6 years longer than those who are nominated, but do not win. However, in that case the failed nominees do know that they have failed. And, curiously, Oscar winning scriptwriters live 3.6 years less than do nominees. Perhaps writers, unlike actors and scientists, live in a world of inverted snobbery. What has been done to avoid sources of bias in Dr.Rablen and Dr.Oswald’s study