US debt

Summary

More or Less (BBC Radio 4) – US Debt

Airdate: August 5, 2011
Host: Tim Harford

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Episode Overview

This episode of "More or Less" delves into the colossal scale of US national debt, using creative analogies to illustrate just how immense $14.3 trillion really is. The conversation then turns to the UK, where claims around NHS spending and government promises are scrutinized through careful analysis. Additionally, the episode investigates the enduring “27 Club” myth in popular music statistics and exposes a media hoax involving internet browser users and IQ. With characteristic wit, Tim Harford and his guests emphasize the importance of interpreting statistics critically, contextualizing scary big numbers, and questioning headline-making data.

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1. Making Sense of the US National Debt

Timestamps: [00:54]–[03:56]
Key Participants: Tim Harford, Nigel Holmes

• Setting the Stage

  • The US recently decided to extend its debt ceiling, with federal government debt hitting a staggering $14.3 trillion.
  • Tim Harford asks, “But how much is $14.3 trillion?” ([00:54])

• Visualizing Trillions – The Stack of $100 Bills

  • Guest Nigel Holmes uses physical analogies to explain:
    • $1 million in $100 bills stacks to 3 ft, 4 inches.
    • $375 million reaches the top of the Empire State Building.
    • $1 billion is just over 2.5 Empire State Buildings; on Mount Everest, the stack equals $8 billion.
    • $100 billion is a stack nearly 69 miles high—well “where meteors are active.” ([01:49])
    • But to reach $14.3 trillion, the pile would extend 9,030 miles into space.
  • Memorable quote:

    "If some earthbound 14.3 trillionaire were to spend it at the rate of $1 million every day, it would take him, well, presumably his heirs, just over 38,500 years to get through it all." – Nigel Holmes ([03:22])

    • Context: That’s older than Homo sapiens; Neanderthals roamed the Earth 38,500 years ago.

• Contextualizing Debt

  • Tim Harford notes the US GDP is roughly equivalent to its federal debt, making the debt-to-GDP ratio about 100%—“which is fairly big.” The real concern, he suggests, is political will to address it. ([03:56])

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2. UK Analogies: Government, NHS Budgets, and Political Promises

Timestamps: [03:56]–[12:06]
Key Participants: Tim Harford, Phil Kemp, Michael Blastland, Gemma Tetlow, Matt Parker, David Buck

A. Big Numbers in the UK

• Stack-of-notes analogies:
  • £1 million in £50 notes = 2.26 meters high.
  • In 2010, UK government borrowing would stretch 336 km in £50 notes—about a kilometer for each day of the year.
  • Total UK government debt in Dec 2010: 2,500 km; UK economy: 3,300 km.

B. Is the UK Government Keeping Its NHS Spending Promise?

• Phil Kemp explains the dispute ([05:52]):

  • Labour claims coalition government spent £800 million less (in real terms) on the NHS in England during its first year; calls it a “cut.”
  • The amount is “less than 1% of the NHS budget for England. Not nothing, but not that much either.” – Tim Harford ([06:09])

• “Underspend” vs. “Cut”

  • Government says the shortfall is an “underspend,” not a cut—emphasizing inevitability of small discrepancies in gigantic budgets.
    • “You can't guarantee that every penny of the available budget will actually be spent.” – Phil Kemp ([06:46])
  • The pledge applied only after the first year (as the coalition inherited Labour’s spending plans).

• The Challenge of Rising Demand

  • Even with a real-terms freeze or slight increase, demand and healthcare costs rise, eroding practical care levels.
    • “A real terms increase in NHS funding could still mean less healthcare, fewer drugs, fewer nurses per patient and so on relative to demand.” – Phil Kemp ([07:43])
    • Gemma Tetlow (Institute for Fiscal Studies):

      “Whether it's a small real terms increase or a small real terms cut won't make much difference in practical terms.” ([08:26])

C. Are Poorer Regions Losing Out?

• Labour’s Diane Abbott claims money is being shifted from poor to wealthy areas ([08:31]).

  • Example: Manchester PCT might lose £41 million, while Surrey gains £61 million.
  • This is due to a reduction in funds earmarked for health inequality from 15% to 10% of the NHS budget.
  • However, overall budgets for all regions will increase in real terms, per government pledge.

• The Numbers in Context:

  • The £41 million cited for Manchester is a future figure:

    “£41 million is the amount they'll lose in today's money from their budget every year at the end of a process... This process could take 20 years.” – Phil Kemp ([10:13])

    • Immediate impact = zero in next year. ([10:35])
    • David Buck (King's Fund):

      “In practice... this won't all happen in a one-off sort of blow. It could take 15 to 20 years. Actually, this will make little difference practically. I think the symbolic nature... may become a large practical problem in the medium to long term. In the short term, it won't do.” ([10:44])

D. NHS Budgets in the Rest of the UK ([11:40])

• England fares better compared to other UK nations:
  • Wales: Health spending to drop by ~11% (by 2013/14)
  • Northern Ireland: Down 2.2% (by 2014)
  • Scotland: 3.3% real-terms cut in this year

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3. “A Solution to Austerity”: Satirical Perspective on Fiscal Sustainability

Timestamps: [12:06]–[18:52]
Key Participants: Tim Harford, Michael Blastland

• OBR Report and Public Angst

  • Office for Budget Responsibility warns of decades of austerity due to rising healthcare costs and an ageing population.

• Michael Blastland’s Satirical Manifesto

  • With tongue in cheek, offers to “save 90 billion pounds from healthcare... lift from the nation's sagging shoulders a vast part of the burden of pensions... halve the state's outlay on education... slash [tax] by 5p.”
  • The solution?

    “All we need do is return to the conditions of 1948 and our problems are solved.” – Michael Blastland ([13:56])

  • Death at 65 and reduction in social burdens through “worse, healthcare, diet and housing, and crippling jobs.”

• Underlying Point: Perspective on Change

  • Real cost burdens (health, education, pensions) were poised to rise even more sharply in 1948 versus now.
    • “[In 1948] healthcare... was about to triple. Burden of education spending was going to double... number of people over retirement age from 10% to... 18, 19, 20%.” – Michael Blastland ([16:30])
  • What’s often left out: As GDP rises (projected to be 4x higher in 50 years), so does the ability to afford greater social spending.
  • “To call it all austere when we’re four times richer... we're enjoying the pessimism a little bit too much.” – Michael Blastland ([18:52])

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4. Myth-Busting: Are Musicians Likely to Die at 27?

Timestamps: [18:52]–[23:46]
Key Participants: Tim Harford, Matt Parker

• Origin of the “27 Club”

  • Prompted by Amy Winehouse’s death at 27, the myth suggests superstar musicians die at this age more than others.

• The Math Behind the Myth

  • Matt Parker suggests confirmation bias:

    “People have researched who’s died at 27 and publicized that... they're overrepresented if you just have a casual glance at the Internet.” ([19:56])

  • Listener research: Out of 350 musicians’ deaths, 27 is over four times the average, but there’s no evidence musicians are uniquely doomed at that age.
  • Academic study: Mark Bellis analyzed the top 1,064 musicians; famous musicians have double the early mortality of average individuals.
    • For new famous musicians (avg. age 25):
      • 2.3% chance of dying in five years (vs. 0.3% in the general population).
      • “If you were in Afghanistan in the army... smaller chance of dying in a five year window [1.9%] than if you become a famous musician [2.3%].” – Matt Parker ([22:28])
  • The trend: Musicians die more in their late 20s but not especially at 27. The 27 Club is “a myth that people like talking about.” ([23:02])

• Light-Hearted Moment:

  • “I've made it past 27. I'm all the way to 30. Although there was another spike in the early 30s.” – Matt Parker ([23:35])

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5. Media Hoaxes and Statistical Caution

Timestamps: [23:46]–[26:46]
Key Participants: Tim Harford, Matt Parker, Charlotte MacDonald

• The Browser IQ Hoax

  • News spread that Internet Explorer (IE) users had lower IQs than those using Firefox, Chrome, or Safari.
  • Matt Parker, as a consulted expert, flagged the suspicious “self-selecting sample,” as did eminent statistician David Spiegelhalter.
  • Despite misgivings, media outlets (including the BBC) ran the story—until it emerged the PR company behind it didn’t exist.
    • “You can make up some data and that's fine, I guess.” – Matt Parker ([26:09])
  • BBC’s statement: Withdrew the story, apologized, and promised to review procedures.

• Critical Reflection

  • Tim Harford comments on the risk of turning PR with “impressive looking numbers and whizzy graphs” into news stories, cautioning:

    “It probably would have been better not to run the story at all... even if the fake story does come from a real public relations company.” ([26:46])

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Notable Quotes

• “A number so big that if some earthbound 14.3 trillionaire were to spend it at the rate of $1 million every day, it would take him... just over 38,500 years to get through it all.” – Nigel Holmes ([03:22])
• “Whether it's a small real terms increase or a small real terms cut won't make much difference in practical terms.” – Gemma Tetlow, IFS ([08:26])
• “In practice... [the regional health allocation changes] won't all happen in a one-off sort of blow. It could take 15 to 20 years.” – David Buck, King’s Fund ([10:44])
• “To call it all austere when we’re four times richer... we're enjoying the pessimism a little bit too much.” – Michael Blastland ([18:52])
• “If you were in Afghanistan in the army, you've got a smaller chance of dying in a five year window than if you become a famous musician.” – Matt Parker ([22:28])
• “You can make up some data and that's fine, I guess.” – Matt Parker ([26:09])
• “It probably would have been better not to run the story at all... even if the fake story does come from a real public relations company.” – Tim Harford ([26:46])

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Episode Takeaways

• Big Numbers Need Context: Analogies help, but understanding ratios (like debt-to-GDP) is key.
• Political Promises & Reality: Small fluctuations in billion-pound budgets don't always match the dramatic rhetoric.
• Watch the Headlines: Headlines about statistical spikes (whether musician deaths or spurious browser IQ claims) can be more myth than substance.
• Healthy Skepticism Required: Even reputable media can propagate dubious “studies” if they offer a compelling narrative.
• The Power of Satire: Sometimes, as with the 1948/1891 thought experiment, it takes satire to illuminate flaws in our economic anxiety.

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[End of content summary]

Transcript

[Tim Harford]

Thank you for downloading the More or Less podcast from the BBC. You can find out more about our programme on our website, BBC.co.uk radio4. But before you do that, here's Tim Harford.

Hello, and welcome to a new series of More or Less, the programme which speaks softly but carries a big slide rule. This week, we'll hear from a man who says he can fix the economy in one fell swoop.

[Michael Blastland]

I can, at a stroke, save 90 billion pounds from healthcare at today's prices, lift from the nation's sagging shoulders a vast part of the burden of pensions, public and private, and of an aged population.

[Tim Harford]

The newest member of the More or Less team, Phil Kemp, will tell us what's really happening to NHS funding in England. Phil, in a nutshell, well, it's pretty complicated. Too complicated of a nutshell.

[Phil Kemp]

Way too complicated.

[Tim Harford]

It always is. And as the club unwittingly founded by Robert Johnson 73 years ago claims another member, we'll find out whether superstar musicians really are more likely to die at the age of 27. First, for connoisseurs of big numbers, it's been an exciting few weeks. After much good natured debate, the US has decided that its total debt, $14.3 trillion, is to be allowed to get even bigger. But how much is $14.3 trillion? It's a number so huge it's almost impossible to imagine. So we asked the graphic designer Nigel Holmes for help. Nigel is the proud owner of a useful trick comparing debt to altitude.

[Nigel Holmes]

Here's a way of thinking about the size of the US national debt. I'm going to make a stack of $100 bills laid directly one on top of another and see how tall the stack is. When it's worth $14.3 trillion, each bill is 0.004 of an inch thick. Pretty thin. As the stack rises, we reach a million dollars surprisingly soon. At 3ft, 4 inches. Continuing upwards, the amount of money in the stack of $100 bills has increased to $375 million by the time it's reached the top of the Empire State Building. So it takes just over two and a half Empire State buildings for the stack to get to $1 billion at the top of Mount Everest 5. And the pile is worth $8 billion. The stack needs to go up to the height of 12 and a half Mount Everests to reach $100 billion. So $100 billion is a stack of $100 bills nearly 69 miles high. And that's where meteors are active. And it seems Like a pretty big number. But let's see how much farther our pile of money has to go than to reach the $14.3 trillion that make up the US national debt. The stack continues up and up. It shoots further into space. Only when it reaches 9,030 miles does the stack finally add up to $14.3 trillion. And that's a number so big that if some earthbound 14.3 trillionaire were to spend it at the rate of $1 million every day, it would take him, well, presumably his heirs, just over 38,500 years to get through it all. And if we were to go back in history that many years, it was when Neanderthals were roaming the Earth.

[Tim Harford]

Nigel Holmes it's worth Remembering that although U.S. debt is very big, the U.S. economy is also very big. U.S. gross domestic product, a measure of the value of goods and services produced in the US in one year, is by coincidence almost exactly the same size as US federal government debt. The debt to GDP ratio is a nice round 100%, which is fairly big. What really concerns some observers, though, is not the size of the debt, but the feeling that US politicians are unlikely to get a grip on it. What about the situation here in the UK? We found some not entirely authoritative claims that the £50 note is 0.113 millimeters thick. Assuming that's true, a stack of a million pounds in 50s would be 2.26 metres high. In the calendar year 2010, UK central and local governments together borrowed, in total 336 km, almost a kilometre of cash a day. And in December, total government debt was 2,500 kilometers. The UK economy is bigger still, though, nearly 3,300 kilometers. Let's stick with big numbers and a number that some people say isn't as big as the government promised it was going to be. It's the budget of the NHS, about 230km tall, just over £100bn. In the run up to the last election, the Conservatives promised they would increase spending on the NHS in England in real terms if elected. Well, they were sort of elected, and in the coalition agreement, they and the Liberal Democrats reiterated the commitment. But over the last week or so, there have been accusations that they've already broken that pledge. And on Sunday, Labour opened a new front by accusing the government of shifting money away from poorer areas in England to better off ones. Let's start with this pledge. Phil Kemp has been delving into the data. Phil, has the government broken its promise or not?

[Phil Kemp]

Well, Labour say the numbers show that in Its first year in office, the coalition spent about 800 million pounds less in real terms on the NHS in England than Labour did in its last year in office. Now, the first thing to say here is the argument is over a relatively small amount of money.

[Tim Harford]

OK, so, yeah, 800 million pounds is less than 1% of the NHS budget for England. Not nothing, but not that much either. How much is that in kilometres, by the way?

[Michael Blastland]

What?

[Tim Harford]

Never mind. Carry on.

[Phil Kemp]

Nonetheless, Labour are right. 800 million pounds less might not be a lot, but it's still less than was spent last year. Labour say the coalition broke its promise and they described that 800 million po as a cut. Now, there's two things to say about that. The first is that the government describes the 800 million pounds as an underspend, not a cut.

[Tim Harford]

OK, hang on. People are going to be laughing at that particular euphemism, aren't they? Underspend instead of cut.

[Phil Kemp]

Well, maybe, but remember that you can't guarantee that every penny of the available budget will actually be spent. I imagine it's pretty hard to spend over £100 billion. Accurately. You might aim to spend that much, but maybe in reality you spend a bit more or a little less.

[Tim Harford]

Ok, I'll let them have underspend. Do they have any other excuses?

[Phil Kemp]

Well, the Government also says that because it took office a month into a financial year, it simply inherited the final year of Labour's NHS spending plans anyway. And it didn't tamper with those plans at all. It says its pledge applies to this year and subsequent years.

[Tim Harford]

Ok, well, I guess the voters can decide whether they're going to be impressed by that. I mean, the coalition could have increased spending beyond what Labour was planning, couldn't they?

[Phil Kemp]

Yep, they could have.

[Tim Harford]

Now, I wonder if we're dancing on the head of a pin here. I mean, I strongly suspect we're going to hear these same arguments again and again over the course of this Parliament. And nobody is pointing out that the difference between keeping the pledge and breaking the pledge could be a pretty insignificant sum of money.

[Matt Parker]

Yeah.

[Phil Kemp]

The other thing that doesn't get mentioned is that demand for NHS services is increasing and so are the costs of providing healthcare. So a real terms increase in NHS funding could still mean less healthcare, fewer drugs, fewer nurses per patient and so on relative to demand. Gemma Tetlow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies made exactly that point to me earlier.

[Tim Harford]

The NHS is set to experience a very small real terms change in its spending between 2010 and 2011. That means that they face a very tight Settlement, certainly in the context of the increases in spending that they've been used to over the last decade or so, whether it's a small real terms increase or a small real terms cut won't make much difference in practical terms.

That's Gemma Tetlow of the ifs. Phil, what about the claim that the Government's moving money from poor to rich areas?

[Phil Kemp]

Ok, here's Diane Abbott. She's Labour's shadow public health minister.

[Tim Harford]

What is happening is that poorer areas in the inner city are having money taken away to go to the shire counties, and these are poor areas with already higher levels of acute health problems. Poor nutrition, smoking and so on. It can't be right to take money away from poor areas.

[Phil Kemp]

Now, Labour put some numbers to this problem. They said that a primary care trust like Manchester, for example, would lose 41 million pounds and that Surrey would gain by 61 million pounds. Let me try to explain what I think is going on here. This is all about a chunk of money that central government gives to primary care trusts in England, which is earmarked for tackling health inequalities between regions. So if you're a region with poor health, you get extra help. And the Government is reducing the percentage of the NHS budget devoted to that problem from 15% to 10%. At the same time, though, from this year onwards, the Government says it will, as it promised, increase health spending in every English region in real terms.

[Tim Harford]

Ok, so the pot of money for tackling health inequality is going down, but the Government says that overall budgets are going up.

[Phil Kemp]

Yeah, but if you're worried about inequalities between regions, then you might still be concerned about this. But here's a point which I think got lost in all of this. Let's look at one of the examples that Labour gave. They said Manchester Primary Care Trust will lose 41 million pounds from its health inequalities pot, and that's about 4% of its entire budget. You might be forgiven for thinking that they meant Manchester Primary Care Trust would lose £41 million now or next year. Perhaps. In fact, £41 million is the amount they'll lose in today's money from their budget every year at the end of a process of building up to that amount. And the report these numbers come from suggest that that process could take 20 years.

[Tim Harford]

OK, so in 20 years time, there'll be £41 million a year worse off.

[Phil Kemp]

That's right.

[Tim Harford]

Okay, well, anything can happen in 20 years. Do we know what they lose next year?

[Phil Kemp]

Yep, we do. And the answer is Nothing. This is what David Buck, senior fellow at the health think tank the King's Fund, had to say about it all.

[David Buck]

NHS Manchester has been talking about what the allocation formula would give them if the weighting is reduced from 15%, 10%, and they are right in the sense that the formula will give a reduction, I think, for Manchester of around £40 million. In practice, the department never takes money away as quickly or gives money as quickly to areas as the formula would imply. So this won't all happen in a one off sort of blow. It could take 15 to 20 years. Actually, this will make little difference. Practically. I think the symbolic nature of this decision is the bigger thing and it may become a large practical problem in the medium to long term. In the short term, it won't do.

[Tim Harford]

David Buck of the King's Fund. Well, thanks for all that, Phil. It's interesting. It sounds as though there's some truth in what Labour's saying and at the same time it's all a lot less dramatic than it might sound.

[Phil Kemp]

Yeah, I think that's about right.

[Tim Harford]

Now, we've been talking about the NHS in England. What's happening to overall budgets everywhere else.

[Phil Kemp]

Well, compared to the rest of the uk, the NHS in England actually fares quite well. The King's Fund has calculated that health spending in Wales is due to fall by around 11% in real terms by 2013 14. Northern Ireland's health, social service and safety spend would go down by 2.2% by 2014. And for Scotland, they've only got figures for this year and that shows a real terms cut of 3.3%.

[Tim Harford]

OK, Phil Kemp, thank you. You're listening to More or Less with me, Tim Harford, in association with the Open University. If there's a number out there which doesn't look right to you, email us at more or lessbc.co.uk we'll send someone round now. In July, the Office for Budget Responsibility published a fiscal sustainability report in which it considered the likely health of Britain's finances far into the future. According to newspaper reports, the OBR struck a sobering tone, explaining that we face decades of austerity because of things related to what we've just been talking about, such as rising health care costs and an aging population. Well, on More or Less, we like to give you solutions, not problems. And happily, we know a man who says he can fix this once and for all. His name? Michael Blasland. Michael reckons that if aging and rising healthcare costs are signs of austerity, logically we're richer without them. And he's found a way of getting rid of these ever growing burdens with a radical manifesto to overcome austerity in the future. By going back to the past. We sent him with a soapbox to College Green, just outside the Houses of Parliament, to see who he could convince.

[Michael Blastland]

Friends, citizens, taxpayers. The news is bleak. The nation trembles. Our future is austere. But fear not, for I have a plan to save us from austerity. I can, at a stroke, save 90 billion pounds from healthcare at today's prices, lift from the nation's sagging shoulders a vast part of the burden of pensions, public and private. And of an aged population. I can halve the state's outlay on education. And far from increasing the tax burden, I can slash it by the equivalent of 5p off the basic rate of income tax.

[Tim Harford]

Slash it?

[Michael Blastland]

How, Michael? Tell us my solution, in a word, or rather a date. 19. 1948. All we need do is return to the conditions of 1948 and our problems are solved. Why, even the budget is better balanced than now. In so many respects, it is a world to die for.

[Tim Harford]

Not half. You'd kill us all. We'll be dead at 65.

Ah.

[Michael Blastland]

Life expectancy at birth was indeed 10 or 12 years lower, I grant you, but let this objection pass. Old age, as we know, because we read it everywhere, is a state of misery, penury, gaga, ill health, loneliness and abuse. We plunder our children's inheritance to dribble into our Albran. Is it any wonder they're queuing for suicide clinics in Switzerland? Better, surely, to avoid all that and stop anyone entering retirement. Decrepitude and burden. Worse, healthcare, diet and housing and crippling jobs should do the trick. Fortunately, 1948 had plenty.

[Tim Harford]

What about the money?

[Michael Blastland]

You imply we'd be poor, madam. Nonsense. Have you not blanched at the cost of a tank of petrol these days? Have you not seen what they charge for a smartphone? A phone, for goodness sake. Are you not led by taxes on the rack for the mortgage and aghast at the price of a decent seat at the Olympics? Or all those, those so called cheap flights where they sting you for the extras? Can anyone doubt that we'd be better off if we didn't have to pay for any of these? Well then, be rid of them, I say. Cheer up, you old fool. But what of the future?

[Phil Kemp]

Tell us.

[Michael Blastland]

Ah, yes, the future. You have a point, sir. The future in 1948 is indeed an objection to my plan. What was to come in the 60 years after 1948 was terrible indeed. The tripling true rippling of the national outlay on health as a share of the nation's resources, the doubling of the burden of education, the explosion of the cost of pensions, the great surge in the aged population and a big rise in taxes in 1948. Faced with a future of such savage austerity, there would be only one sensible course of action, a return to 1891.

[Tim Harford]

1890, That's already 189. Michael Blastland has got down off his soapbox and he appears to have calmed down a little. He's with me in the studio now. Michael, you don't really want to go back to 1948. What's going on?

[Michael Blastland]

Well, I think it was when I was reading this stuff reporting the Office for Budget Responsibilities projections for the next 50 years and what was going to happen to the economy and the burdens on us, you know, and quite a lot of what I read talked about how austere it was going to be. And in 1948 it was indeed the case that health care, the burden, we'll put it like that, the burden of health care spending was about to triple. Burden of education spending was going to double the number of people over retirement age from 10% to. I don't know, we're nearly 20 now. I think 18, 19, 20%, something like that. All these things which at the moment we're saying are going to be terrible were far, far worse in 1948. The magnitudes of the change were bigger the looking ahead in 1948 than they are looking ahead now. And now we're saying that this is terribly austere.

[Tim Harford]

I guess what you're saying really is to say that the cost of healthcare is going to increase is not necessarily the right way to look at this sort of question.

[Michael Blastland]

It's only one half of the balance sheet. Now, the top line of the Office for Budget Responsibility's projections was GDP didn't get reported much. The projections for gdp we reported all the costs, healthcare and so on, and education and pensions and the rest. We didn't report the GDP. The implication of the GDP protections are that in 50 years time we'll be four times richer than we are now.

[Tim Harford]

Doesn't sound very austere.

[Michael Blastland]

Doesn't sound particularly austere, does it? And then there's the interesting consequence of being four times richer is that do you want to spend everything the same ways that you spend it now? And all our experience in modern economies is that we change the pattern of our spending as we get richer and we start to want to spend more on things like health care and education and a longer retirement where we're funded, you know, by bigger pensions or at least pensions that have to last a lot longer, at least, and so on. So these are choices that result from wealth, partly. And the things that wealth does, like, allow us to live longer and so on, and to regard them simply as costs, A without taking any account of the other side of the balance sheet, the income, and B without taking account of the way that our choices change as our income grows seems to me to be slightly potty. And then to call it all austere when we're four times richer. I mean, when I read that, something in me snapped. I think I thought we're enjoying the pessimism a little bit too much.

[Tim Harford]

Michael Blasland, you're listening to More or Less. When Amy Winehouse was found dead last month, newspapers around the world pointed out that her death at the age of 27 put the singer in a club few would wish to join, the so called 27 Club of Rock and pop musicians who died at that age. Other members include Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain and Brian Jones. The iconic blues musician Robert Johnson was the club's unwitting founder. But while plenty of musicians have perished at 27, many have not. So is it really true, as some have claimed, that superstar musicians are more likely to die at 27 than at any other age? We asked Matt Parker of Queen Mary University of London, also known as the stand up mathematician, to do the sums. What have you found out, Matt?

[Matt Parker]

I thought it was worth looking into because when you hear 27 Club, you think it's got to be confirmation bias. It's got to be people looking for more deaths at 27 and then searching till they find them.

[Tim Harford]

Yeah, I never saw any list of the number of musicians who died at the age of 26, for instance.

[Matt Parker]

Exactly. And plenty died at 26, 28. But actually if you just search the Internet, a ridiculous number, I would say disproport number did die at age 27. But that's not to say that more of them are dying at that age. It's just that the 27 myth has been around for so long that people have researched who's died at 27 and then publicized that and so that they're overrepresented if you just have a casual glance at the Internet. In fact, one of your more or less listeners, Matthew page, found 350 different deaths of musicians on the Internet and 27 was over four times the average

[Tim Harford]

so, well, it's quite a spike.

[Matt Parker]

It's a huge spike in that regard.

[Tim Harford]

Could be coincidence. I mean, presumably there is some age at which musicians have to shuffle off the mortal coil. And you know, whatever it is, people are going to make a fuss of it.

[Matt Parker]

Yeah, exactly. And people make a huge Fuss when they're 27 because it matches the 27 club. So I found someone had actually done some proper research into do musicians die more often than normal people? As such, a guy called Mark Bellis at the Liverpool John Moore's University took a cohort of musicians. What he did were these superstars or

[Tim Harford]

just people who play music.

[Matt Parker]

Well, this is it, because he wanted to have famous musicians but a well defined set. And so he took the 1000 top albums as voted in the year 2000, took out all the compilations and soundtracks and then took all the artists either in bands or solo who appear. And so he had 10, 64 artists from the top 1,000 albums. And he analyzed how many of them had died. And when he did this in the year 2005, 100 of them had died. And his study was basically saying if this was a health risk, becoming a famous musician, what's the mortality rates afterwards? And he found that if you are a famous musician, you've got a double chance of dying earlier than you should compared to being a normal person.

[Tim Harford]

So the fame and the money and

[Matt Parker]

the drugs are bad for you. It basically turns out having lots of disposable income and drugs is not great for your health. But I wanted to answer the 27 Club question. So I got some of his data and re crunched it and I found that when you become famous as a musician in the first five years of being famous, there's a 2.3% chance you will die.

[Tim Harford]

Is that high?

[Matt Parker]

I thought, well, I want to compare that to the normal population and the average age to become a famous musician is about 25. And if you take a cohort of people who are 25 in the UK with the same gender split as musicians, there's only a 0.3% chance of dying in the next five years.

[Tim Harford]

It's substantially an order of magnitude. Yeah, gosh, okay.

[Matt Parker]

Actually I double checked. If you were in Afghanistan in the army, you've got a smaller chance of dying in a five year window than if you become a famous musician. Five years in a war zone, 1.9% of people in the front line will die. Whereas if you become a famous musician, 2.3% of you will die in five years.

[Tim Harford]

That suggests actually there is something to this 27 club business then? Because, I mean, there is a certain age at which you're likely to get famous and being famous is a health risk because you're young and your subject's lots of pressures and you've got lots of money. So maybe it's real.

[Matt Parker]

There is a definite underlying statistical trend where lots of people become musicians in their early to mid-20s and being a musician has a greatly increased chance of dying in the next five years. More musicians do die in their late 20s by a significant margin than normal people. The trouble with a statistical trend is it doesn't really capture the public's imagination, whereas something like the 27 Club does. And so the 27 Club is a product of this actual statistical trend, but it's a myth that people like talking about.

[Tim Harford]

Now, Matt, I need to check, you're a bit of a superstar yourself. You're the stand up mathematician. How old are you?

[Matt Parker]

I've made it past 27. I'm all the way to 30. Although there was another spike in the early 30s.

[Tim Harford]

Alright, so you're not quite out of

[Matt Parker]

the woods, not quite through the woods yet.

[Tim Harford]

Keep living clean, Keep living clean. Well, thank you very much, Matt, and stay with us because a different story caught my attention this week. The BBC website, along with many, many other media outlets reported that users of the popular Internet browser Internet Explorer had a lower IQ than users of alternative browsers such as Chrome and Firefox and Safari. And this got an awful lot of play. An awful lot of users of Firefox, Chrome and Safari, I think, spread this story around and it seemed a bit suspicious to me. And then we were discussing it just before we came into the studio, Matt, and apparently the BBC called you for your expert advice on the story. What did you tell them?

[Matt Parker]

Well, I was one of the mathematicians that they checked with, which is very good of them all my normal PR alarm bells went off because it came from the PR wing of a company and as I pointed out, it had a self selecting sample.

[Tim Harford]

Yeah.

[Matt Parker]

So I raised my usual, it looks like a PR press release bit of statistics and I'd be very cautious, but

[Tim Harford]

nevertheless, they ran with the story.

[Matt Parker]

They did. And they spoke to more eminent mathematicians than me. As you saw, David Spiegelhalter, friend of

[Tim Harford]

more or less David Spiegelhalter, professor for the Public Understanding of Risk at Cambridge University. And they did quote David Spiegelhalter. Yes, I got trumped when David Spiegelhalter basically says it's nonsense because. Or at least it's highly suspicious because the intelligence they're reporting for Internet Explorer users is about 80, which is actually extremely low. I mean these are people who really would have trouble functioning in front of a computer, full stop. What struck me as strange is you told them it was suspicious. David Spiegelholtz told them it was suspicious. To their credit, they asked you and they published. David Spiegelholz response. But nevertheless they went ahead and published the story. And then there was a twist. A day or so later they withdrew the story, replaced the story because it turns out the PR company itself doesn't seem to exist. The whole thing seems to have been a hoax. Now what do you make of that?

[Matt Parker]

I think this is great because when one of these press releases comes out, they ask a few people, but the story still runs regardless of how dubious the data may be. And obviously this is all different media outlets. On this occasion the company happened to not exist and at that point they had to pull the press release. But to be honest, there are countless other equally dubious press releases that have been turned into stories that are still out there.

[Tim Harford]

So the BBC appears to think the only crime is to be a non existent public relations.

[Matt Parker]

You can make up some data and that's fine, I guess.

[Tim Harford]

Well, Matt Parker, the stand up mathematician, thank you very much.

[Matt Parker]

Pleasure as always.

[Tim Harford]

Now, Charlotte MacDonald has just joined us and Charlotte, I think you asked the BBC whether it would put somebody up to talk about this. What have they said?

Well, they said that they wouldn't, but they did give us a statement which says we published this story in good faith, but on further investigation discovered it was a hoax. As soon as this was established, we immediately published another article explaining what had happened. We apologise to our audiences for the error and we'll look at any lessons to be learned in how we approach this kind of story.

Well, let me point out what I think is one lesson. If you get a press release masquerading is a news story and it contains a bunch of impressive looking numbers and whizzy graphs. It's fantastic. The BBC went to the trouble of consulting both a mathematician and a statistician who then said it all looked a bit dodgy. A lot of other media outlets didn't do that. What I don't understand is why the BBC then went ahead and published the story anyway, albeit with a cautionary quote from Professor Spiegelhalter. It probably would have been better not to run the story at all. And I think that's true. Even if the fake story does come from a real public relations company. But, hey, what do I know? Thank you, Charlotte. Now, this is not the end, but it is the end of the beginning. The first program of our summer series is nearly over, but do please check out the More or less website, BBC.co.uk more or less for more goodies, including our podcast and tweet, or email us your thoughts. We're at More or Less at BBC Co uk. We'll be back next week, and until then, goodbye.

More or Less is presented by Tim Harford, the Financial Times' undercover economist. More or Less is made in association with the Open University.