Next you’re gonna tell me that North Korea isn’t really a democracy!
The moral of the story is: If you’re making a claim based on data, be aware of where your data come from.
Next you’re gonna tell me that North Korea isn’t really a democracy!
The moral of the story is: If you’re making a claim based on data, be aware of where your data come from.
“In Okinawa, the best predictor of where the centenarians are is where the halls of records were bombed by the Americans during the war.”
The entire column is a hilarious must-read. Saul Justin Newman is definitely a guy I would like to have a beer with.
I just read the “background” link and the flame war between Robert Young and Newman.
Then I went and looked for published works by Robert Young the gerontologist, easily identified by his affiliations. I found this paper from 2011 where he, as first author, seems to be saying the same thing as Newman:
“Typologies of Extreme Longevity Myths”
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1155/2010/423087
…and now I am really confused!
Reading the background link — wow! I wonder whether any of the discussants there will chime in again?
And having grown up in Manchester, I agree with Mr Newman — you would have a hard time convincing me that people who lived in the downtown area of Manchester lived to over 110.
To be a little more careful or systematic, I would suggest readers look at the discourse around results from one country’s data/system at a time. I think the published communication about the Italy data is worthwhile.
I would never have believed I’d someday feel the Ig Nobel might be cheapened lol, but maybe many ppl have felt it over the years, I don’t know…would never have understood why. Reading the 2024 list early this morning, I was laughing so hard at the titles (and imagining how they may each be important, too), I had tears coming out of my eyes and no kidding a cat came over, seemed like tried to comfort me – they were/are a joy to read. Then the demography one didn’t make me laugh as much – Was it just as funny for others, or is it because I’m more familiar with demography?? To me – never been a scholar, but keep up with literature – it ended up looking like the Ig Nobel was being used with consideration to assert an idea… Maybe that was a great thing from the Ig Nobel’s all along though, I don’t know.
I do have the impression right now that the so-called Blue Zone ideas are probably built on sand, and I don’t know what I would have thought yesterday – little demography is about Blue Zones – but I’m much less sure that other oldest-old research is unreliable.
I think we need to keep an open mind, and maybe inaccurate birth records actually do cause people to live longer. For evidence, I would point to my grandfather, who turned 100 this year and is healthier than most 80 year olds I know (he still drives and lives by himself). Everyone agrees he was born in 1924, but three different government agencies think he was born on three different days. I know it seems unlikely, but I’m considering ripping up my birth certificate just to be safe.
Wins thread.
It does seem relatively common for people to perceive a benefit to it.
1) Avoid conscription
2) Earlier retirement benefits
3) Some degree of fame and prestige
Interesting that he turns to the physicists. I suspect this refers to something like “bomb carbon” dating that has been used to find extreme (but totally unverifiable) longevity in arctic sharks:
Vertebral Bomb Radiocarbon Suggests Extreme Longevity in White Sharks
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaf1703
I really do feel like this is one of biggest problems in observational research, especially with any kind of administrative data. People aren’t institutionalists and so forget that their data comes from an administrative process that is changing frequently. Because it’s often at step 0 of doing an analysis it doesn’t get talked about or considered much. Plotting (especially plotting any time dimension) can help, but sometimes I feel like it’s probably even better to become (or collaborate with) an historian.