Winners of the Indianapolis 500 drink milk to celebrate their victory; perhaps winners of the Nobel Prizes do the same after receiving a congratulatory phone call from Stockholm. 

That’s one theory to explain why countries in which people drink the most milk, per capita, also win the most Nobel Prizes, per capita, according to a new study. 

Take Sweden, the country that’s home to the Nobels. Citizens there have won 31.855 prizes for every 10 million people. They also consume about 350 kilograms of milk each, on average, over the course of a year. 

At the other end of the spectrum is China, a country that has won a mere 0.060 Nobels per 10 million people and where the average person drinks less than 50 kilograms of milk per year. 

The United States fall close to the middle, with a Nobel-winning rate of 10.731 per 10 million citizens and milk consumption of abotu 250 kilograms per person per year. 

Coincidence? Perhaps. The smooth curve that appears in the new edition of the journal Practical Neurology only indicates a correlation between milk-drinking and Nobel-winning, not a causal relationship.