Science has given us another thing not to trust; the elderly – who apparently lie all the time about how old they are.
According to a new working paper by researchers at the Biological Data Science Institute at Australian National University, “supercentenarians” – those over 110-years-old, have a habit of bullshitting about their age.
The conclusion – yet to undergo peer review – was reached by ANU scientist Saul Justin Newman after a thorough examination of birth records in various states which began reliably keeping them yielded a 69% – 82% drop in the number of supercentenarians.
So out of every 10 alleged supercentenarians, 7 or 8 are actually younger according to the study. Whether they’re lying on purpose, lost track of their age, or even committing benefits fraud is unknown.
The paper also looks at the phenomenon in Italy and Japan, where something different seems to be happening.
Italy keeps better vital statistics than the United States does, and has had reliable vital statistics across the country for hundreds of years — yet in Italy, too, there are clusters of the country where lots of supercentenarians pop up. Maybe the Italian supercentenarians are for real?
Newman’s analysis suggests not. He starts out by noticing something fishy: The parts of Italy that claim the most supercentenarians overall have high crime rates and low life expectancy. Isn’t that weird? Why would an area generally have low life expectancy but also produce an extremely disproportionate share of the world’s oldest people?
The same pattern repeats itself in Japan: Okinawa has the greatest density of super-old people, despite having one of the lowest life expectancies in the country and generally poor health outcomes.
The paper puts forward a controversial proposal. It seems unlikely that living in high-crime, low-life-expectancy areas is the thing that makes it likeliest to reach age 110. It seems likelier, the paper concludes, that many — perhaps even most — of the people claiming to reach age 110 are engaged in fraud or at least exaggeration. –Vox
Perhaps very old people in crime-ridden areas that historically respect the elderly are able to avoid violence?
Newman disagrees. “Remarkable age attainment is predicted by indicators of error and fraud,” and does not correlate to access to medical care or clusters of healthy old people. “As a result, these findings raise serious questions about the validity of an extensive body of research based on the remarkable reported ages of populations and individuals.”
Never again can we trust old ladies on the news who say they lived to 113 by drinking a gallon of whiskey and smoking a pack of menthols every day.
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After I turned 63 I would always asked for the Senior Discount and early on you could tell that many people looked at me with some skepticism and some would even question me and ask for proof. Apparently people have become much more trusting because no one questions me anymore.
Or the world is sadly taking its toll on your appearance. Go to a county or a city where they have forced EVERYONE to ID EVERYONE for alcohol sales. That is always a nice change of pace.
The Okinawan diet was touted in the past as the reason for the longevity. Methinks that after the battle for Okinawa in 1945 all the records were lost so anyone was able to state their advanced age.
Perhaps this is accurate, but one has to keep in mind the prevalent fraud in studies of various kinds. It seems that a lot of even peer reviewed studies that get published give results that cannot be verified or reproduced. And what seems most “likely” often turns out to be not the case.
I don’t know whether it was because of when she was born (1934 – the “silent” generation), or the fact that she was a pathological liar virtually her entire life, but my mother even lied about her age on MY birth certificate. I guess she wasn’t comfortable that my father was 2 years younger than her, but seriously. The irony of her life was that she was constantly juggling lies about herself, which requires significant memory to keep straight, and she ended up with Alzheimer’s which completely robbed her of her memory. The older I got, the more lies I discovered. The internet helped break several wide open. Sadly, there were huge chunks of her life and her life with my father before their marriage, that she never told me about. Once the disease set in, there was absolutely no way to believe anything she said in response to inquiries, but all the rest of it remains questionable as well.
Lying to say you are older than you are when you get to be that old, is all about getting some attention. It is sad, but harmless to a degree. The only people it really seems to be harming are the epidemiologists desperately trying to find out the “secrets to long life” by listening to the lies of these older folks. And if they are willing to lie about their age, they are likely lying about their lifestyle as well.
My wife’s grandfather lived to nearly 103. He smoked cigars and lived on cookies and brandy and lots of raw raspberries from his own farm. He worked virtually ever day of his life in the U.P. of Michigan building and moving houses (with horse/mule-drawn moving equipment), and had a 40 acre farm he tended to (along with shoveling up to 200″ of snow every winter. Both of his kids never even got close in age.
Don’t trust anybody over 60.
Well said, although the actual quote is “Don’t trust anyone over 30.”
