4 ms·

Did anyone pull the full study? Does it come out and take the supercentenarian-ship claimants to task for lack of probity?

hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
There is a 'full text' tab in the linked article.
crazygringo 7y ago
It explicitly mentions pension fraud -- who wouldn't want to retire a little earlier? > The hypothesis that these relatively low literacy rates and incomes are generating age-reporting errors and pension fraud, and therefore remarkable age records, seems overlooked. ... > This issue presents a substantial problem for remarkable-age databases, embodied in a deliberately provocative, if seemingly absurd, hypothesis: > Every ‘supercentenarian’ is an accidental or intentional identity thief, who owns real and validated 110+ year-old documents, and is passably good at their job.
- simias 7y ago
  Interestingly the holder of the record for oldest human being remains Jeanne Calment and there's a lot of evidence for her record. Wikipedia mentions a theory that her daughter might have assumed her identity in the 1930's[1] but it doesn't appear very credible. So I guess it is possible to live that old, just extremely unlikely. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment#Scepticism_regarding_age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment#Scepticism_rega...
  - gamblor956 7y ago
    There's a very detailed analysis of Calment showing that it is most likely that the daughter replaced the mother, since the facial features of Jeanne Calment as a middle-aged or elderly woman don't match her earlier photos at all...but are a splitting image of her daughter's facial features. Also, a lot of her photos feature her wearing clothes that were not in style at the ages she appears to be in the photos--but would have been right for her daughter. And there's the bit where she keeps calling her putative husband her father... And finally it's just plain weird that her son-in-law (i.e., her daughter's husband) moved in with her after her daughter's supposed death and lived with her in a common-law relationship for decades. But it makes perfect sense if it was actually just the daughter assuming her mom's identity for tax evasion purposes.
    - simias 7y ago
      I replied to this in a similar comment above, I disagree that this analysis is very detailed, or at least that it's more detailed than the evidence in favor of Jeanne being who she claims to be. I looked at the picture comparisons, it's not like they had 20Megapixel HDR cameras back then, the quality is not great. Besides only a handful of pictures exist, with a lot of variations in lighting and exposition. It's possible that it's true, but it's not exactly overwhelming evidence in my opinion. >And finally it's just plain weird that her son-in-law (i.e., her daughter's husband) moved in with her after her daughter's supposed death and lived with her in a common-law relationship for decades. Wikipedia says: "By the 1954 census, she was still registered in the same apartment, together with her son-in-law, retired Colonel Billot, Yvonne's widower; the census documents list Jeanne as "mother" in 1954 and "widow" in 1962. Frédéric Billot lived next door with his wife Renée." Doesn't make it sound quite as weird as you make it out to be.
      - gamblor956 7y ago
        Wikipedia says: "By the 1954 census, she was still registered in the same apartment, together with her son-in-law, retired Colonel Billot, Yvonne's widower; the census documents list Jeanne as "mother" in 1954 and "widow" in 1962. Frédéric Billot lived next door with his wife Renée." Doesn't make it sound quite as weird as you make it out to be. That is extremely weird, and the simplest and most logical explanation is that Yvonne was committing estate tax fraud to avoid a ruinous tax on her inheritance of the family store. Besides only a handful of pictures exist, with a lot of variations in lighting and exposition. It's possible that it's true, but it's not exactly overwhelming evidence in my opinion. Yes, but pictures of the two of them are available and the older pictures of Jeanne clearly match the younger pictures of Yvonne. Jeanne would have needed to have had face surgery or some serious facial structural changes to have the face she did in her old age. The simplest explanation, again, is that Jeanne died young(ish) and Yvonne pretended to be her. And again, this also explains why for decades, despite otherwise being sound of mind and coherent, she kept referring to her husband as her father in casual conversation.
- benj111 7y ago
  I wonder if you get the opposite in regions with relatively better child benefits? Child benefits lead to shorter lifespans...
ipsi 7y ago
A little bit? It does say that many _could_ be committing, e.g., pension fraud, but that the primary issue is with the data, and the reliance on documents as the "source of truth" of these claims, and this seems to accurately sum it up: > This issue presents a substantial problem for remarkable-age databases, embodied in a deliberately provocative, if seemingly absurd, hypothesis: "Every ‘supercentenarian’ is an accidental or intentional identity thief, who owns real and validated 110+ year-old documents, and is passably good at their job." > This hypothesis cannot be invalidated by the further scrutiny of documents, or by models calibrated using document-informed ages. Rather, invalidating this hypothesis requires a fundamental shift: it requires the measurement of biological ages from fundamental physical properties, such as amino acid chirality or isotopic decay. > Until such document-independent validation of remarkable ages occurs, the type I error rate of remarkable human age samples will remain unknown, and the validity of ‘supercentenarian’ data in question.

hn_throwaway_99 7y ago

There is a 'full text' tab in the linked article.

crazygringo 7y ago

It explicitly mentions pension fraud -- who wouldn't want to retire a little earlier? > The hypothesis that these relatively low literacy rates and incomes are generating age-reporting errors and pension fraud, and therefore remarkable age records, seems overlooked. ... > This issue presents a substantial problem for remarkable-age databases, embodied in a deliberately provocative, if seemingly absurd, hypothesis: > Every ‘supercentenarian’ is an accidental or intentional identity thief, who owns real and validated 110+ year-old documents, and is passably good at their job.

simias 7y ago
Interestingly the holder of the record for oldest human being remains Jeanne Calment and there's a lot of evidence for her record. Wikipedia mentions a theory that her daughter might have assumed her identity in the 1930's[1] but it doesn't appear very credible. So I guess it is possible to live that old, just extremely unlikely. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment#Scepticism_regarding_age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment#Scepticism_rega...
- gamblor956 7y ago
  There's a very detailed analysis of Calment showing that it is most likely that the daughter replaced the mother, since the facial features of Jeanne Calment as a middle-aged or elderly woman don't match her earlier photos at all...but are a splitting image of her daughter's facial features. Also, a lot of her photos feature her wearing clothes that were not in style at the ages she appears to be in the photos--but would have been right for her daughter. And there's the bit where she keeps calling her putative husband her father... And finally it's just plain weird that her son-in-law (i.e., her daughter's husband) moved in with her after her daughter's supposed death and lived with her in a common-law relationship for decades. But it makes perfect sense if it was actually just the daughter assuming her mom's identity for tax evasion purposes.
  - simias 7y ago
    I replied to this in a similar comment above, I disagree that this analysis is very detailed, or at least that it's more detailed than the evidence in favor of Jeanne being who she claims to be. I looked at the picture comparisons, it's not like they had 20Megapixel HDR cameras back then, the quality is not great. Besides only a handful of pictures exist, with a lot of variations in lighting and exposition. It's possible that it's true, but it's not exactly overwhelming evidence in my opinion. >And finally it's just plain weird that her son-in-law (i.e., her daughter's husband) moved in with her after her daughter's supposed death and lived with her in a common-law relationship for decades. Wikipedia says: "By the 1954 census, she was still registered in the same apartment, together with her son-in-law, retired Colonel Billot, Yvonne's widower; the census documents list Jeanne as "mother" in 1954 and "widow" in 1962. Frédéric Billot lived next door with his wife Renée." Doesn't make it sound quite as weird as you make it out to be.
    - gamblor956 7y ago
      Wikipedia says: "By the 1954 census, she was still registered in the same apartment, together with her son-in-law, retired Colonel Billot, Yvonne's widower; the census documents list Jeanne as "mother" in 1954 and "widow" in 1962. Frédéric Billot lived next door with his wife Renée." Doesn't make it sound quite as weird as you make it out to be. That is extremely weird, and the simplest and most logical explanation is that Yvonne was committing estate tax fraud to avoid a ruinous tax on her inheritance of the family store. Besides only a handful of pictures exist, with a lot of variations in lighting and exposition. It's possible that it's true, but it's not exactly overwhelming evidence in my opinion. Yes, but pictures of the two of them are available and the older pictures of Jeanne clearly match the younger pictures of Yvonne. Jeanne would have needed to have had face surgery or some serious facial structural changes to have the face she did in her old age. The simplest explanation, again, is that Jeanne died young(ish) and Yvonne pretended to be her. And again, this also explains why for decades, despite otherwise being sound of mind and coherent, she kept referring to her husband as her father in casual conversation.
benj111 7y ago
I wonder if you get the opposite in regions with relatively better child benefits? Child benefits lead to shorter lifespans...

ipsi 7y ago

A little bit? It does say that many _could_ be committing, e.g., pension fraud, but that the primary issue is with the data, and the reliance on documents as the "source of truth" of these claims, and this seems to accurately sum it up: > This issue presents a substantial problem for remarkable-age databases, embodied in a deliberately provocative, if seemingly absurd, hypothesis: "Every ‘supercentenarian’ is an accidental or intentional identity thief, who owns real and validated 110+ year-old documents, and is passably good at their job." > This hypothesis cannot be invalidated by the further scrutiny of documents, or by models calibrated using document-informed ages. Rather, invalidating this hypothesis requires a fundamental shift: it requires the measurement of biological ages from fundamental physical properties, such as amino acid chirality or isotopic decay. > Until such document-independent validation of remarkable ages occurs, the type I error rate of remarkable human age samples will remain unknown, and the validity of ‘supercentenarian’ data in question.