About the Authors

A. James O’Malley

Contributed equally to this work with: A. James O’Malley, Samuel Arbesman

omalley@hcp.med.harvard.edu (AJO); arbesman@gmail.com (SA)

Affiliation Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America

Samuel Arbesman

Contributed equally to this work with: A. James O’Malley, Samuel Arbesman

omalley@hcp.med.harvard.edu (AJO); arbesman@gmail.com (SA)

Affiliation Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Kansas City, Missouri, United States of America

Darby Miller Steiger

Affiliation Gallup Government, Cleveland, Ohio, United States of America

James H. Fowler

Affiliation Departments of Medical Genetics and Political Science, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America

Nicholas A. Christakis

Affiliations Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America, Department of Sociology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: SA NAC JF. Performed the experiments: DMS. Analyzed the data: AJO. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: AJO SA. Wrote the paper: AJO SA NAC.