Death Won’t Wait. Cancer Deaths Around Birthdays and Religious Holidays

When it comes to certain long lasting and fatal illnesses, there is a widespread ›folk belief ‹ in the hypothesis that persons are able to delay their own death for a brief period of time: A lot of people can tell anecdotes about relatives or close friends that died from such an illness, e. g. cancer, only a few days after their birthday or important religious holidays, simply because they intensely wanted to live to see that specific event. Results both supporting and opposing this hypothesis of an ›intentionally delayed death ‹ can be found in the recent literature, with many of the findings based on rather small and/or rather specific samples. In our research project we analysed more than four million cases of people who died from malignant neoplasms (cancer)—a cause of death being prototypical for the ›type of dying ‹ meeting the above requirements. In this data we found no evidence supporting the hypothesis: neither for the population in general nor for specific religious, regional, or other sub-groups. In the present paper, the core results of the research project are presented alongside some methodological remarks. In a forthcoming paper by the authors, a more in-depth discussion of the methodology and the results will be given