At this point, I think we all have to admit that science is pretty awesome.

I mean, its brought us the electric light, internet tubes, the theremin, LSD and cyborg monkeys that can move objects with their minds. What else do you want?

I mean, unless youre one of those neo-Luddite squares who whine about unforeseen negative consequences and possible damage to the environment and all that other crap. Wow, youre so going to regret your science-hatin ways when I unleash my secret army of telekinetic robo-chimps and chortle as they use their turbo-charged monkey brainwaves to burst your skull open like an over-ripe banana, Scanners-style. I mean, what could possibly be the unforeseen negative consequences of that?

Of course, just because science can be awesome, doesnt mean its consistently awesome. Like all great artists, sometimes scientists cant summon forth enough inspiration and resort to phoning that shit in.

As an example, let me present a soon-to-be-published research study from the fine folks at the Liverpool John Moore Universitys Centre For Public Health, entitled Elvis To Eminem, that comes to the shocking conclusion that being a rock star just might not be the healthiest career choice a young person can make.

Yes, in case youve ever disputed the scientific accuracy of the rock n roll motto Live Fast, Die Young, now it has been statistically proven!

Alas, not the Live Fast part, since apparently its either difficult to gauge the airspeed velocity of the average unladen rock musician, or the researchers assumed that Hüsker Düs Land Speed Record was actually a previous thesis on the subject.

Focusing instead on the Die Young part, the researchers started out with a UK list of what are supposedly the All Time Top 1,000 Albums compiled in 2000. They then tallied up all the various North American and European musicians from the mainstream popular categories of rock, punk, rap, R&B (rhythm and blues), electronica and new age that appeared on said list, excluding for no apparent reason those from the music genre classifications of country, blues, jazz, vocal, celtic, folk, bluegrass and spoken word.

Im sure you fans of Johnny Cash, Miles Davis, Robert Johnson, Hank Williams and Bill Hicks will be pleased to know that, scientifically speaking, they are not as important as The Backstreet Boys.

After establishing their cohort of 1064 famous or semi-famous musicians (and you know somethings all good and sciencey when you can use words like cohort, not to mention phrases like offset transposition matrix), they established which of them were dead, when and how they died, and how long theyd been famous. They then compared those statistics to the average life expectancy for the general population and discovered the following paradigm-shifting fact:

Pop stars can suffer high levels of stress in environments where alcohol and drugs are widely available, leading to health-damaging risk behaviour.

Those health-damaging risk behaviours, such as flying in airplanes or being a drummer for Spinal Tap, mean that famous musicians are around 1.7 times more likely to die than your average schmuck. So the next time your crappy band plays a show in some lousy dive bar in front of five disinterested drunks and one snarky hipster fuck yelling Freebird!, dont think of it as a sign that you perhaps shouldnt have dropped out of college to pursue your dreams of rock stardom, but instead as an indicator that youre scientifically 1.7 times less likely to suddenly fall over dead than the dudes in Nickelback.

One of the interesting quirks of this study is the disparity between survival rates for American and European rock stars. Statistically, becoming a famous musician in Europe lowers your survival rate dramaticallyto that of the average American.

So if youre reading this article in, say, England, and are wrestling with the age-old dilemma Should I become a massively famous rock superstar and live a life of Caligulaesque decadence, playing sold-out arena shows and getting stoned to the gills on a plethora of drugs while being sexually serviced in cartoonishly improbable ways by at least five adoring groupies at a time every night, or should I play it safe and become an accountant?, rest assured that option #1 is, scientifically speaking, as dangerous to your health as moving to Nebraska and shopping at Wal-Mart.

Even better, if you manage to survive being a famous European rock star for over 25 years, your survival rate improves past that of the average American of the same age, while the survival rate for American rock stars declines ever faster. The researchers conducting this study advance a few theories as to why, such as American rock stars performing more nostalgic or reunion tours (and I admit, if I had to spend most of my evenings performing Keep On Lovin You at various state fairs, Id yearn for the sweet embrace of death as well) or the disparity between the American and European health care systems leaving impoverished American musicians more at risk of not having health insurance as they get on in years. Of course, the continued existence of Keith Richards alone could have skewed the results.

While this study may be of dubious practical value, at least it deals with actual human beings. Unlike a previous UK study that dealt with the survival rates of British soap opera characters.

No, not British soap opera actors, British soap opera characters.

In case you were wondering how dangerous it really is to be a fictional character on a British soap opera, science has the answer!

Characters in soap operas lead very dangerous lives. Their lives are more dangerous even than those of Formula One racing drivers or bomb disposal experts. People suffering from many forms of cancer and other serious diseases have better five-year survival rates than do these characters.

Cynics may scoff at how laughably pointless it is to research the mortality rates of fictional characters on soap operas, even if its done all science-like using Kaplan-Meier survival curves and Cox regression, with age as a time dependent covariate, but that just means they cant ask themselves the big, important science questions:

Could the exaggerated portrayal of these violent and dangerous lives be contributing to our distorted national perceptions about violent crime and death?"

Yes, without our pal science, the entire British national perception of violent crime and death would continue to be distorted! Without this valuable research, mankind would have to survive without

the first quantitative estimate of the size of the pinch of salt which should be taken when watching soap operas.

The horror!

Uncognitive was going to write a soap opera about rock stars until he discovered that, scientifically, all of the characters would have to die during every episode.

SockPuppet

I'm lost

July 2006

SEP 14, 2007 04:59 PM

Why is this science?

I'm serious. This is statistics, not science.

Alz

Lincoln, NE

February 2007

SEP 14, 2007 05:05 PM

So if you're reading this article in, say, England, and are wrestling with the age-old dilemma "Should I become a massively famous rock superstar and live a life of Caligulaesque decadence, playing sold-out arena shows and getting stoned to the gills on a plethora of drugs while being sexually serviced in cartoonishly improbable ways by at least five adoring groupies at a time every night, or should I play it safe and become an accountant?", rest assured that option #1 is, scientifically speaking, as dangerous to your health as moving to Nebraska and shopping at Wal-Mart.

Obviously, someone has never tried to live through a day after Thanksgiving sale at the Walmart on 27th street. It's amazing more people aren't slaughtered for $20 dvd players.