I totally disagree, but it's only my opinion and probably not scientific at all.

From a logical point of view I think it's totally unnatural to start at 1. You have 10 diffferent "chars" available in the decimal system. Starting at 1 mostly leads to counting up to 10. But 10 is already the next "iteration". How do you explain a kid, who's learning arithmetics, that the decimal system is based on 10 numbers and at the same time you always refer to this list from 1 to 10.