Apparently, lots of famous musicians have died at the age of 27. From this fact resulted a legend that this is an “unlucky” age, and that musicians are more likely to die at this age.

However, this has now been proven untrue by scientists. According to the Washington Post: 

“The researchers — three statisticians and one health economist — devised a study to determine whether musicians who had achieved success (as defined by their having had a number-one album on the British charts between 1956 and 2007) were more likely than the average person in that country to die at that particular age. Their sample included 1,046 musicians of all ilks and genres (among them, the authors note, several Muppets), 522 of whom were designated as being “at risk” for having achieved their success before turning 27.”

Okay, as you may have guessed, this is a joke. For some reason, this particular journal, the BMJ, always does some sort of joke issue in December.

On the other hand, they actually did write a whole article about it.  I mean, they did it in jest, but apparently someone actually did spend time putting it together. And, as you may see by the Washington Post article and this CNN article, the press seems to treat it almost like an actual science story.

Seems to me like a waste of time, but whatever.