> The paper looks at twins in Sweden. Hence, everyone in the study was subject to more or less the same environmental conditions, while only a portion (the mono

> The paper looks at twins in Sweden. Hence, everyone in the study was subject to more or less the same environmental conditions, while only a portion (the monozygotic cohort) are genetically identical. You can use this design to isolate the portion of variance in longevity attributable solely to genetics, while making no other structural assumptions about the possible mechanism. You seem to be completely missing my point. Twin studies do not prove that genetics are not a component of longevity. All it shows is that among the genes the commonly vary between human twins there is little influence on longevity. A far narrower statement than genetics does not influence longevity. > At the extremes of the age distribution (this includes your lobster people) they essentially found no such component. Over the entire age range you can explain perhaps a third of variability in longevity by genetics. My lobster people are not captured by any distribution. They do not exist. You cannot simply extrapolate the curve of Swedish twins out to lobster people. That isn't how statistics works - that isn't how anything works. >Also, you seem to be under the impression that lobsters and humans are completely different at a genetic level. I am not at all under that impression. What I am under the impression of is that lobsters have extreme longevity relative to humans, and that that can be explained by the ways in which their genome differs from ours (primarily, at least).