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How Much Do We Know About Really Old People?
Why most of what we know about the 85+ population could be wrong.
Disclaimer: I have previously written about and personally replicated aspects of Dr. Newman’s work. However, I have not had time to fully replicate the study that I’m writing about here. I have downloaded the code, which appears to faithfully recreate all of the figures in the paper, but haven’t rewritten and rerun it to confirm that the findings are all accurate.
Scientists have been looking into the lives of the very old for a long time. The basic idea is simple — if we can find commonalities between people who get to the age of 90 and beyond, we can figure out how they got there. If we know what causes extreme longevity, then maybe we can understand how to make other people live much longer lives as well.
This is the basic concept behind Blue Zones and about half of all longevity science. Look at the very old, and they will show you how to add decades to your life.
Except, as a new paper shows, this entire field of research is potentially…untrustworthy. The data seems to show that the majority of extremely old people are probably much younger than they claim to be.