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  3. Dr. Rablen and Dr. Oswald have just published a study which concludes that Nobel science laureates live significantly longer tha

Dr. Rablen and Dr. Oswald have just published a study which concludes that Nobel science laureates live significantly longer tha

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问题     Dr. Rablen and Dr. Oswald have just published a study which concludes that Nobel science laureates live significantly longer than those of their colleagues who were nominated for a prize, but failed to receive one. They work with data from 1901 to 1950, and the search is restricted to men (to avoid differences in life span between the sexes), and those killed prematurely are eliminated. That gave them 135 prize winners and 389 also-rans.
    The theory they were testing was that status itself, rather than the trappings of status, such as wealth, act to prolong life. This idea was first declared by Sir Michael Marmot, of University College, London. Sir Michael studied the health of British civil servants and discovered, contrary to his and everyone else’s expectations, that those at the top of the hierarchy — whom the stress of the job was expected to have affected adversely — were actually far healthier than the supposedly unstressed functionaries at the bottom of the heap. Subsequent research has confirmed this result, and suggested it is nothing to do with the larger salaries of those at the top. But Dr. Rablen and Dr. Oswald thought it would be interesting to refine the observation still further, by studying individuals who were all, in a sense, at the top. By comparing people good enough to be considered for a Nobel, they could measure what the status of having one was worth.
    Comparing winners and also-rans from within the same countries, to avoid yet another source of bias, Dr. Rablen and Dr. Oswald found that the winners lived, on average, two years longer than those who had merely been nominated. Exactly what causes this increased longevity is unclear. It is not the cash, though. The inflation adjusted value of the prize has fluctuated over the years, so the two researchers were able to see if the purchasing power of the money was correlated with longevity. It was not.
    With the hierarchically ordered individuals studied by Sir Michael and his successors, both medical records and experiments on animals suggest stress hormones are involved. It is, indeed, more stressful to be at the bottom than the top, even if being at the top involves making decisions on the fate of nations. The result Dr. Rablen and Dr. Oswald have come up with, though, suggests a positive effect associated with high status, rather than the absence of a negative effect, since unsuccessful nominees never know that they have been nominated.
    A similar effect has been noted once before, in a different field. Research published a few years ago by Donald Redelmeier and Sheldon Singh showed that Oscar winning actors and actresses live 3.6 years longer than those who are nominated, but do not win. However, in that case the failed nominees do know that they have failed. And, curiously, Oscar winning scriptwriters live 3.6 years less than do nominees. Perhaps writers, unlike actors and scientists, live in a world of inverted snobbery.
What has been done to avoid sources of bias in Dr. Rablen and Dr. Oswald’s study?
选项 A、Excluding the abnormal deaths.
B、Selecting more prize nominees than winners.
C、Having all subjects from the same country.
D、Assuming inflation as an irrelevant factor.
答案A
解析 事实细节题。文章首段段尾处介绍了两位博士在研究中为了避免偏差所采取的措施：研究对象限定为男性；排除英年早逝的人。浏览选项知，[A]为第二项措施的同义转述，故正确。由首段尾句可知，[B]是避免偏差来源之后得到的客观实验数据，不是避免偏差来源的手段，故排除；第三段首句提到了“将对比双方限定在同一个国家内”，但不是说所有实验对象都来自同一国家，故[C]错；第三段最后两句提到“在过去数年里，通货膨胀不断改变着奖金的价值，因此两位研究者可看出货币的购买力是否与长寿相关”，这说明考虑“通货膨胀”这一因素对研究结果有影响，而非避免偏差来源的措施，因此[D]错误。
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