Hound of the Baskervilles: Natural or statistical experiment?
In their paper “Psychology and survival” (The Lancet, 1993, vol. 342,
pp. 1142-1145) Phillips et al. examined the correlation between year of
birth and survival (average age of death, AAD) of Chinese Americans who
died of cancer, heart diseases and pulmonary diseases. They found that the
birth year of “fire” (years ending in 6 or 7), which is “bad” for heart,
does not make a significant change in AAD in the case of chronic ischaemic
heart disease (drop by only 0.14 years) but is more significant in acute
myocardial infarction (drop by 1.22 years), while in “all other heart
diseases” the AAD increases by 0.67 years.
Questions:
- Why does “bad” birth year not have a significant psychosomatic effect
in chronic heart diseases while the number of the day has?
An interesting statistical problem would be to superimpose the two
effects, i.e. birth year and day number. No question, any chinese
astrologist has the answer.
- Have the authors studied the effect of “Day 4” on other sources of
death (cancer etc)?
Also, in case that the birth year counts in the Baskerville effect,
some correction may be needed in this study, because the studied period
of 1973 – 1998 includes three pairs of “bad heart” years (1976-’77, ’86-
’87 and ’96-’97), three pairs of “bad liver” years, two and half pairs of
“bad tumour” years and two pairs of “bad lungs” years. I mean, that period
was (astrologically) worse for heart than for lungs.
Rapid Response:
Hound of the Baskervilles: Natural or statistical experiment?
In their paper “Psychology and survival” (The Lancet, 1993, vol. 342,
pp. 1142-1145) Phillips et al. examined the correlation between year of
birth and survival (average age of death, AAD) of Chinese Americans who
died of cancer, heart diseases and pulmonary diseases. They found that the
birth year of “fire” (years ending in 6 or 7), which is “bad” for heart,
does not make a significant change in AAD in the case of chronic ischaemic
heart disease (drop by only 0.14 years) but is more significant in acute
myocardial infarction (drop by 1.22 years), while in “all other heart
diseases” the AAD increases by 0.67 years.
Questions:
- Why does “bad” birth year not have a significant psychosomatic effect
in chronic heart diseases while the number of the day has?
An interesting statistical problem would be to superimpose the two
effects, i.e. birth year and day number. No question, any chinese
astrologist has the answer.
- Have the authors studied the effect of “Day 4” on other sources of
death (cancer etc)?
Also, in case that the birth year counts in the Baskerville effect,
some correction may be needed in this study, because the studied period
of 1973 – 1998 includes three pairs of “bad heart” years (1976-’77, ’86-
’87 and ’96-’97), three pairs of “bad liver” years, two and half pairs of
“bad tumour” years and two pairs of “bad lungs” years. I mean, that period
was (astrologically) worse for heart than for lungs.
George Argyrakos
Agronomist.
Athens, Greece
argyrakos@37.com
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests