Researcher Wins Award For Debunking Longer Life Expectancies in 'Blue Zones'

Slashdot first covered Saul Justin Newman's work in 2019.

Now a senior research fellow at the Centre for Longitudinal Studies at University College London, Newman was recognized last week for research finding that most claims of people living over 105 are wrong. Newman's research was honored with an Ig Nobel Prize (awarded for research that makes people 'laugh then think') — which led to a thought-provoking interview in the Conversation:

Newman: In general, the claims about how long people are living mostly don't stack up. I've tracked down 80% of the people aged over 110 in the world (the other 20% are from countries you can't meaningfully analyse). Of those, almost none have a birth certificate. In the U.S. there are over 500 of these people; seven have a birth certificate. Even worse, only about 10% have a death certificate.

The epitome of this is blue zones, which are regions where people supposedly reach age 100 at a remarkable rate. For almost 20 years, they have been marketed to the public. They're the subject of tons of scientific work, a popular Netflix documentary, tons of cookbooks about things like the Mediterranean diet, and so on. Okinawa in Japan is one of these zones. There was a Japanese government review in 2010, which found that 82% of the people aged over 100 in Japan turned out to be dead. The secret to living to 110 was, don't register your death. [Newman says later that '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 Japanese government has run one of the largest nutritional surveys in the world, dating back to 1975. From then until now, Okinawa has had the worst health in Japan. They've eaten the least vegetables; they've been extremely heavy drinkers....

With the Greeks, by my estimates at least 72% of centenarians were dead, missing or essentially pension-fraud cases... According to the Greek minister that hands out the pensions, over 9,000 people over the age of 100 are dead and collecting a pension at the same time. In Italy, some 30,000 'living' pension recipients were found to be dead in 1997. Regions where people most often reach 100-110 years old are the ones where there's the most pressure to commit pension fraud, and they also have the worst records.

So what's the truth on human longevity? 'The question is so obscured by fraud and error and wishful thinking that we just do not know,' Newman answers (suggesting physicists 'develop a measure of human age that doesn't depend on documents.') In the end the truth may be much more ordinary. 'Longevity is very likely tied to wealth. Rich people do lots of exercise, have low stress and eat well.'

Newman also says that if the scientific community won't acknowledge their errors during his lifetime, 'I guess I'll just get someone to pretend I'm still alive until that changes.'

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.

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