A study by Dr Saul Justin Newman (Centre for Longitudinal Studies) has won the first-ever Ig Nobel award in Demography at this year’s 34th Ig Nobel Prizes. His work reveals fundamental flaws in the data about the world’s oldest people and patterns of extreme longevity.
I started getting interested in this topic when I debunked a couple of papers in Nature and Science about extreme ageing in the 2010s. 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 US 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.
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.
[…]
In Okinawa, the best predictor of where the centenarians are is where the halls of records were bombed by the Americans during the war. That’s for two reasons. If the person dies, they stay on the books of some other national registry, which hasn’t confirmed their death. Or if they live, they go to an occupying government that doesn’t speak their language, works on a different calendar and screws up their age.
This made me laugh.
But most people don’t lose count of their age…
You would be amazed. Looking at the UK Biobank data, even people in mid-life routinely don’t remember how old they are, or how old they were when they had their children. There are similar stats from the US.
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.
:doomjack: The Okinawans themselves will tell you this, in a lot of respects that island is Japan’s dumping ground.
You would be amazed. Looking at the UK Biobank data, even people in mid-life routinely don’t remember how old they are, or how old they were when they had their children. There are similar stats from the US.
Can verify. I’m closing in on 50 and I forget my actual age all the damned time, as well as the ages of my family members.
At the time it wasn’t, because I was raised by two cucked right-wing nutjobs who took me to Reagan and Bush rallies where military planes would fly over and they’d play I’m Proud To Be An American and shit like that. I was an adult before I started to wake up out of that stupor. Ironically, it was how they raised me that started my journey. My parents raised me as a evangelical Christian, and it was the dichotomy between what the Bible said and what the politicians and preachers were saying that started me on the path to recovery.
Jesus-brained is exactly what I’d describe my childhood as. My partner came from a similar background, and we just tell people we were in a cult because of how far it was from mainstream Christianity.
I was around when it happened but I didn’t know it was sad until I went there a decade later and listened to stories from people who lived there. People were really good at describing how empty and fearful life felt for them when it fell. I had to stop and recalibrate.
An interview with Saul Justin Newman who did the research. My favorite bit: “The secret to living to 110 was, don’t register your death.”
This made me laugh.
:doomjack: The Okinawans themselves will tell you this, in a lot of respects that island is Japan’s dumping ground.
My mom has no idea how old I even am. No dementia or anything like that, she just doesn’t keep track like that I guess
Can verify. I’m closing in on 50 and I forget my actual age all the damned time, as well as the ages of my family members.
fuck shit I’m only in my late 20s and have to mentally calculate [this year] - [birth year] frequently 💀
I do some quick math using my birth year, and when people ask how old I am I reference eastern european countries that no longer exist.
My go-to will be Yugoslavia from now on, haha
Back in my day we had two Germanies and one Soviet Union, and that’s the way we liked it!
wow you actually witnessed the USSR ending? Damn, mustve been really fucking sad
At the time it wasn’t, because I was raised by two cucked right-wing nutjobs who took me to Reagan and Bush rallies where military planes would fly over and they’d play I’m Proud To Be An American and shit like that. I was an adult before I started to wake up out of that stupor. Ironically, it was how they raised me that started my journey. My parents raised me as a evangelical Christian, and it was the dichotomy between what the Bible said and what the politicians and preachers were saying that started me on the path to recovery.
You’re almost me, except we were a different flavor of Jesus-brained.
Jesus-brained is exactly what I’d describe my childhood as. My partner came from a similar background, and we just tell people we were in a cult because of how far it was from mainstream Christianity.
I was around when it happened but I didn’t know it was sad until I went there a decade later and listened to stories from people who lived there. People were really good at describing how empty and fearful life felt for them when it fell. I had to stop and recalibrate.
Man I’m in my 20s and it takes me a second and I’ve gotten it wrong before. It completely makes sense to me that people in middle age would forget.