Baskerville Effect
The term Baskerville effect ( Engl. : The Hound of the Baskervilles effect or short Baskerville effect ) took its first mention in December 2001 in the British Medical Journal (Volume 323, 22 to 29 December 2001). American researchers led by David P. Phillips from the University of California, San Diego reported there that Americans of Chinese and Japanese descent are particularly likely to die of cardiac arrest on the 4th day of the month . This effect (Baskerville effect) does not show up in Americans of other origins; That is, they do not have such a significant accumulation on any particular day of the month. This astonishing finding is based on extensive death data from the past 25 years.
Naming
In the novel The Dog of Baskerville (1902) by Arthur Conan Doyle , the character Charles Baskerville suffers a fatal heart attack (myocardial infarction) under extreme stress. Baskerville was superstitious and suffered from chronic heart disease. Doyle, in turn, was a doctor, which led the study's authors to wonder whether his story was based on medical intuition or on poetic freedom.
Laboratory studies in the past have confirmed an association between cardiovascular (i.e. heart and vessel) changes and psychological stress. For ethical reasons, the stress to which the test subjects are exposed in the laboratory can only be relatively low. The scientists working with David P. Phillips therefore came up with a test design that can reflect the real conditions under higher stress.
Design and method
hypothesis
The 4 is, similar to the 13 in our culture, in China , Korea and Japan as an unlucky number , the fourth thus in a certain sense as an unlucky day. In Mandarin (standard Chinese, Peking dialect), Cantonese, Korean and Japanese , the words " death " and "four" are pronounced almost identically. For this reason, some Asian clinics (and also other buildings) do not have a 4th floor or room 4. Some Japanese people avoid traveling on the 4th of the month. Apparently, superstitious people are put into (additional) psychological stress on these days. Such emotional exertion is - among many others - a typical heart attack-inducing situation.
If the number 4 is stressful in the Chinese and Japanese, and if Arthur Conan Doyle's medical intuition was correct, there should be an increase in cardiac deaths on the 4th of each month in Americans of Chinese and Japanese ancestry.
Review of the basic assumption
First of all, the scientists checked whether the dislike of the number 4 was in fact there. To do this, they took advantage of the fact that new telephone subscribers in California have certain options to determine the last four digits of their new telephone number themselves. The telephone numbers of Chinese, Japanese and American restaurants have now been found in the California directory and examined for their last four digits. In fact, the numbers of Asian restaurants had significantly fewer fours than would have been statistically expected (366 observed / 475 expected). There was no such aversion to the number 4 in the control group (219/204).
Data situation
The researchers had access to the computerized death records of 209,908 Americans of Chinese and Japanese origin and of 47,328,762 Americans of non-Asian origin. These data cover the period from January 1973 to December 1998 and contain a reference to the ancestry of the deceased (racial code). Only the data from 1989 onwards were used, as only these regularly recorded the status of the patient (inpatient / non-inpatient).
method
The death dates of the non-Asian control group were compared with those of the Americans of Chinese and Japanese descent. The information on the patient status, cause of death, gender, age and marital status of the deceased were important. For each deceased of Japanese / Chinese descent, twelve non-Asian people were compared, for which all the variables listed above were identical.
Results
On the fourth day of a month, cardiac death was found to be the cause of death significantly more frequently in the examined group than on any other day of the month. The number of cardiac deaths was 7% higher than the average for the rest of the week; H. the ratio of observed to expected cases was 1.07 (with a 95 percent confidence interval : 1.03–1.12). In patients with chronic heart disease, this percentage increased to 13% (1.13; 1.06–1.21). In California, the death rate from chronic heart disease rose by as much as 27% on the 4th of the month (1.27; 1.15–1.39). A comparable effect - such as fear of the 13th - could not be shown in the control group, which consisted of non-Asian Americans.
See also
swell
- DP Phillips, GC Liu et al. a .: The Hound of the Baskervilles effect: natural experiment on the influence of psychological stress on timing of death. In: BMJ. Volume 323, Number 7327, 2001 Dec 22-29, pp. 1443-1446, PMID 11751347 , PMC 61045 (free full text).
- Die Welt, December 24, 2001, article »Superstition causes stress«
- AC Doyle: The Baskerville Hound. Heyne Crime Classics 2105, Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich, 1984