“The lesson that random events like the deaths of four musicians can influence the development of culture and history is broadly applicable,” Dunivin said. “The classic example in history is the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. If the bullet strays just a little from its path, the archduke survives. How might borders, cultures and industry look different if (World War I) hadn’t happened?”
Adrian Barnett, a statistician at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, was the senior author of the BMJ study that debunked the idea that 27 is a particularly deadly age for musicians. He said he found the new work persuasive.
“The authors make a good case for the 27 Club being a real thing because it is a thing,” said Barnett, whose primary area of research is reducing hospital infections. “It’s a self-propelling phenomenon.”
And it’s not limited to pop culture, he added.
“It reminds me of some cancer clusters, where a surprising number of cancers gets notoriety, say in a workplace during a short period of time, and then the cluster gets bigger because other office workers get tested and cancers get diagnosed that would have been missed without the concern caused by the initial cluster,” Barnett said. “So a potentially chance set of events creates a self-propelling cluster.”
Deconstructing the way an idea spreads through society helps scientists understand what makes communities come together or splinter apart, Dunivin said. The sum total of these ideas is our culture, which “makes our individual lives rich and fulfilling,” he said.