Morbid: Debunking Modern Longevity Science

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/07/06/morbid-saul-justin-newman-book-review-eat-your-ice-cream-ezekiel-j-emanuel

17•nabbed•1h ago

https://archive.md/wSjtj

Comments

claytongulick•44m ago

I can't find it, but I read an article somewhere that many "blue zones" also had grossly skewed metrics due to public benefits fraud - relatives weren't reporting the family member's death so that they could continue to collect benefits checks.

The author claimed that once you corrected for this, the blue zones pretty much all disappeared.

Edit: found it [1]

[1] https://fortune.com/europe/2024/12/14/are-blue-zones-myth-ex...

zeristor•43m ago

Yes, I read that too.

Frustratingly recent blue zone fans haven’t mentioned this deep critique.

tim-tday•14m ago

People want to believe in blue zones so their confirmation bias is hiding the evidence to the contrary.

cyberax•38m ago

Ah, "the secret to longevity is pension fraud and poor record keeping".

zeristor•28m ago

“UCL demographer’s work debunking ‘Blue Zone’ regions of exceptional lifespans wins Ig Nobel prize”

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/news/2024/sep/ucl-demographers-wor...

“Supercentenarian and remarkable age records exhibit patterns indicative of clerical errors and pension fraud”

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v3

joe_the_user•33m ago

I think the wikipedia page on Jeanne Calment actually does a good job of debunking "revisionist" doubting of the record.

After consulting several experts, The Washington Post wrote that "statistically improbable is not the same thing as statistically impossible", that Novoselov and Zak's claims have been dismissed by the overwhelming majority of experts, and that those claims are "lacking, if not outright deficient". [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment#Controversy_reg...

joe_the_user•14m ago

I think there are problems with modern longevity science. The OP's "A fundamental challenge that longevity gurus face is that what’s true is often boring, and what’s interesting often isn’t true" is plausible.

But it also seems like there's a tendency for debunkers to be too categorical. It should be kept in mind that anyone aged around 110 would have gone through a variety of age and other record systems. Moreover, it's quite possible exercise and special diet as such really really aren't that useful.

arjie•28m ago

The same thing has happened to this thing as happened to UFOs, cryptids, and religious miracles. The arrival of documentary techniques of the things led to a massive decline. People often bemoan the effect of the smartphone on attention. But have they considered the deleterious effect of 5G on magic?

tim-tday•16m ago

Blue zones are bullshit. Pension fraud in Italy, records destroyed in Okinawa, basically every place with abnormal longevity has some other explanation.

https://allthatsinteresting.com/blue-zones-supercentenarians

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