7 ms·

I am reminded of https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/study-questions-age-worlds-oldest-woman-180971153/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/study-qu

by btilly 7y ago

I am reminded of https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/study-questions-age-worlds-oldest-woman-180971153/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/study-questions-ag... which lays out the case that the oldest woman on record, Jeanne Calment, was actually her daughter Yvonne who substituted herself for her mother in 1934 to avoid inheritance taxes.

gwern 7y ago
Yes, there's an interesting philosophical question here about burdens of proof and Humean 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence'. Calment's claim is to be the oldest person out of billions of people, and she is the oldest by a truly extraordinary margin - no one has even come close to reaching her record before or since. So, which is more likely: that her claim however improbable (someone has to win the lottery) is completely correct (and she simply had some unique luck or mutation enabling her excess longevity), or that some highly unusual (but still more likely than '1 in tens of billions') circumstance (such as a complicated tax & insurance fraud) has led to a mistake? Indeed, how would one ever be sure of such a claim, short of the isotopic testing advocated in OP - which will, incidentally, stop working in the future? (This is a general problem of priors and evidence and model uncertainty I think about occasionally: https://www.gwern.net/Modus https://www.gwern.net/Modus https://www.gwern.net/Littlewood https://www.gwern.net/Littlewood https://www.gwern.net/Mail-delivery#on-model-uncertainty https://www.gwern.net/Mail-delivery#on-model-uncertainty https://www.gwern.net/Research-criticism https://www.gwern.net/Research-criticism https://www.gwern.net/Everything https://www.gwern.net/Everything https://www.gwern.net/Turing-complete#on-seeing-through-and-unseeing https://www.gwern.net/Turing-complete#on-seeing-through-and-... )
- CommieBobDole 7y ago
  I really wouldn't say "nobody has come close" - she was 3 years older (122 vs 119) than the next oldest verified person, and around five years from most of the next top ten - most of them died at 117. If she was, say, 132, I'd be more suspicious, but 122 sounds more reasonable for statistical outliers in an incredibly complex process.
  - gwern 7y ago
    The problem is, 3 years is a huge gap. If you look at all the other centenarians, they really do cluster within months of 117-119. And then you have Calment, who is the only outlier and who is like 30+ months past them all (and this is at a time of life where the annual mortality rate is like >50%). I plotted the age gap between the record holders once, and it looks basically like a flat line and then a single dot at the top of the graph corresponding to Calment. It may be a complex process, but at least for everyone else they die on schedule.
    - galaxyLogic 7y ago
      It is possible even if unlikely. But if you are right that it is way too unlikely then the next alternative is that her age was exaggerated by 3 years. The theory that she "was her own daughter" I think is also possible but less likely than an (intended or unintended) error of 3 years somewhere.
    - xamuel 7y ago
      It's also worth pointing out that all the Abrahamic religions predict a 120-year limit, which prediction dates back thousands of years (Genesis 6:3). So regardless of your opinion of Abrahamic religions, there are a lot of people who would care a great deal about verifying those extra three years!
      - mrsuprawsm 7y ago
        >all the Abrahamic religions predict a 120-year limit Do you have any more information on this? It sounds like interesting reading, but all I can find on Google is a link to this post.
        Jabbles 7y ago
        https://www.versebyverseministry.org/bible-answers/are-people-limited-to-120-years-of-life https://www.versebyverseministry.org/bible-answers/are-peopl... from https://www.google.com/search?q=bible+120+year+age+limit https://www.google.com/search?q=bible+120+year+age+limit
- jl6 7y ago
  A suggestion that there may be a straightforward determination of facts via a blood test: https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/DNA-blood-test-could-reveal-if-Jeanne-Calment-was-really-122 https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/DNA-blood-test-c...
  - gwern 7y ago
    A special case, though. Almost all centenarians wouldn't admit of such a solution - at least, until we start getting whole population pedigrees and then an inability to put a centenarian in the appropriate place becomes proof of error/fraud.
- GuiA 7y ago
  > that her claim however improbable (someone has to win the lottery) is completely correct That line of reasoning does not apply here. Someone will win the lottery given enough time as the possibility space is bound - but there is no similar given guarantee that any human would ever live to age X if we have never observed a human living to age X before.
  - gwern 7y ago
    It does apply. Someone has to be the oldest. Someone has to be the oldest-person who has the largest gap. Regardless of how old that is, or how large the gap is, there will be at least one.
    - GuiA 7y ago
      Ok, now I get the point you were trying to make. The lottery parallel still doesn't feel the most apt; the definition you specify ensures that you will always have such a person (who lived to be the oldest, and who had the largest gap with the previous record holder) for n > 1 people. In that sense it is recurrent, unlike winning the lottery, which no one has until someone does (or winning in a raffle, where we know that there will aways be a winner due to the very definition of the game). Regardless, none of that helps us determine any further how plausible Calment's statistically anomalous record is.
    - jobigoud 7y ago
      Someone has to be the oldest but the gap is an independent information. Mortality rate is constant at 0.5 per year for Supercentenarians. That gap is a massive outlier.
simias 7y ago
I just discovered this theory and I've been reading the sources, both in English and in French and frankly I'm not convinced. I don't find the photographic evidence presented in the paper particularly convincing. It really reads that the type of stuff you read on conspiracy theory forums, extrapolating wildly based on cherry-picked and very limited material. Besides I think the counter-argument that the people in Arles would've noticed if Fernand Calment suddenly started pretending that his daughter was his wife seems rather pertinent. Apparently the theory gained traction thanks to this article summarizing the research: https://medium.com/@yurideigin/jaccuse-why-122-year-longevity-record-may-be-fake-af87fc0c3133 https://medium.com/@yurideigin/jaccuse-why-122-year-longevit... There are so many leaps of logic in there that it's hard for me to take seriously. I like in particular that they use this photo to argue that Yvonne was taller than Jeanne when their posture is completely different: https://miro.medium.com/max/1050/1*VBI9NRmZ58XcZXif_6cgzw.png https://miro.medium.com/max/1050/1*VBI9NRmZ58XcZXif_6cgzw.pn... I think the best argument in favor of this theory is that apparently Jeanne asked for some family documents to be destroyed which does seem highly suspicious, although it's also quite plausible that there were some other family secrets she didn't want to be made public especially since at the time she was becoming famous worldwide. Meanwhile Jeanne was apparently able to name old professors and maids of hers, things that her daughter would probably not have known or remembered. I wouldn't rule the theory out entirely but it's rather flimsy at this point IMO.
- avar 7y ago
  I have no stake in this conspiracy either way. Just responding to a couple of things: > Besides I think the counter-argument that the people in Arles would've noticed if Fernand Calment suddenly started pretending that his daughter was his wife seems rather pertinent. This seems to assume a lot about the nature of their personal and social life. According to the Wikipedia article they didn't even live in the same apartment while they were married, so perhaps they weren't seen together in public. > Meanwhile Jeanne was apparently able to name old professors and maids of hers, things that her daughter would probably not have known or remembered. Really? If you're going to go assume someone else's identity with their cooperation and you're not stupid you're going to find out every little detail about their past life and remember it.

by btilly 7y ago

gwern 7y ago

Yes, there's an interesting philosophical question here about burdens of proof and Humean 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence'. Calment's claim is to be the oldest person out of billions of people, and she is the oldest by a truly extraordinary margin - no one has even come close to reaching her record before or since. So, which is more likely: that her claim however improbable (someone has to win the lottery) is completely correct (and she simply had some unique luck or mutation enabling her excess longevity), or that some highly unusual (but still more likely than '1 in tens of billions') circumstance (such as a complicated tax & insurance fraud) has led to a mistake? Indeed, how would one ever be sure of such a claim, short of the isotopic testing advocated in OP - which will, incidentally, stop working in the future? (This is a general problem of priors and evidence and model uncertainty I think about occasionally: https://www.gwern.net/Modus https://www.gwern.net/Modus https://www.gwern.net/Littlewood https://www.gwern.net/Littlewood https://www.gwern.net/Mail-delivery#on-model-uncertainty https://www.gwern.net/Mail-delivery#on-model-uncertainty https://www.gwern.net/Research-criticism https://www.gwern.net/Research-criticism https://www.gwern.net/Everything https://www.gwern.net/Everything https://www.gwern.net/Turing-complete#on-seeing-through-and-unseeing https://www.gwern.net/Turing-complete#on-seeing-through-and-... )

CommieBobDole 7y ago
I really wouldn't say "nobody has come close" - she was 3 years older (122 vs 119) than the next oldest verified person, and around five years from most of the next top ten - most of them died at 117. If she was, say, 132, I'd be more suspicious, but 122 sounds more reasonable for statistical outliers in an incredibly complex process.
- gwern 7y ago
  The problem is, 3 years is a huge gap. If you look at all the other centenarians, they really do cluster within months of 117-119. And then you have Calment, who is the only outlier and who is like 30+ months past them all (and this is at a time of life where the annual mortality rate is like >50%). I plotted the age gap between the record holders once, and it looks basically like a flat line and then a single dot at the top of the graph corresponding to Calment. It may be a complex process, but at least for everyone else they die on schedule.
  - galaxyLogic 7y ago
    It is possible even if unlikely. But if you are right that it is way too unlikely then the next alternative is that her age was exaggerated by 3 years. The theory that she "was her own daughter" I think is also possible but less likely than an (intended or unintended) error of 3 years somewhere.
  - xamuel 7y ago
    It's also worth pointing out that all the Abrahamic religions predict a 120-year limit, which prediction dates back thousands of years (Genesis 6:3). So regardless of your opinion of Abrahamic religions, there are a lot of people who would care a great deal about verifying those extra three years!
    - mrsuprawsm 7y ago
      >all the Abrahamic religions predict a 120-year limit Do you have any more information on this? It sounds like interesting reading, but all I can find on Google is a link to this post.
      - Jabbles 7y ago
        https://www.versebyverseministry.org/bible-answers/are-people-limited-to-120-years-of-life https://www.versebyverseministry.org/bible-answers/are-peopl... from https://www.google.com/search?q=bible+120+year+age+limit https://www.google.com/search?q=bible+120+year+age+limit
jl6 7y ago
A suggestion that there may be a straightforward determination of facts via a blood test: https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/DNA-blood-test-could-reveal-if-Jeanne-Calment-was-really-122 https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/DNA-blood-test-c...
- gwern 7y ago
  A special case, though. Almost all centenarians wouldn't admit of such a solution - at least, until we start getting whole population pedigrees and then an inability to put a centenarian in the appropriate place becomes proof of error/fraud.
GuiA 7y ago
> that her claim however improbable (someone has to win the lottery) is completely correct That line of reasoning does not apply here. Someone will win the lottery given enough time as the possibility space is bound - but there is no similar given guarantee that any human would ever live to age X if we have never observed a human living to age X before.
- gwern 7y ago
  It does apply. Someone has to be the oldest. Someone has to be the oldest-person who has the largest gap. Regardless of how old that is, or how large the gap is, there will be at least one.
  - GuiA 7y ago
    Ok, now I get the point you were trying to make. The lottery parallel still doesn't feel the most apt; the definition you specify ensures that you will always have such a person (who lived to be the oldest, and who had the largest gap with the previous record holder) for n > 1 people. In that sense it is recurrent, unlike winning the lottery, which no one has until someone does (or winning in a raffle, where we know that there will aways be a winner due to the very definition of the game). Regardless, none of that helps us determine any further how plausible Calment's statistically anomalous record is.
  - jobigoud 7y ago
    Someone has to be the oldest but the gap is an independent information. Mortality rate is constant at 0.5 per year for Supercentenarians. That gap is a massive outlier.

simias 7y ago

I just discovered this theory and I've been reading the sources, both in English and in French and frankly I'm not convinced. I don't find the photographic evidence presented in the paper particularly convincing. It really reads that the type of stuff you read on conspiracy theory forums, extrapolating wildly based on cherry-picked and very limited material. Besides I think the counter-argument that the people in Arles would've noticed if Fernand Calment suddenly started pretending that his daughter was his wife seems rather pertinent. Apparently the theory gained traction thanks to this article summarizing the research: https://medium.com/@yurideigin/jaccuse-why-122-year-longevity-record-may-be-fake-af87fc0c3133 https://medium.com/@yurideigin/jaccuse-why-122-year-longevit... There are so many leaps of logic in there that it's hard for me to take seriously. I like in particular that they use this photo to argue that Yvonne was taller than Jeanne when their posture is completely different: https://miro.medium.com/max/1050/1*VBI9NRmZ58XcZXif_6cgzw.png https://miro.medium.com/max/1050/1*VBI9NRmZ58XcZXif_6cgzw.pn... I think the best argument in favor of this theory is that apparently Jeanne asked for some family documents to be destroyed which does seem highly suspicious, although it's also quite plausible that there were some other family secrets she didn't want to be made public especially since at the time she was becoming famous worldwide. Meanwhile Jeanne was apparently able to name old professors and maids of hers, things that her daughter would probably not have known or remembered. I wouldn't rule the theory out entirely but it's rather flimsy at this point IMO.

avar 7y ago
I have no stake in this conspiracy either way. Just responding to a couple of things: > Besides I think the counter-argument that the people in Arles would've noticed if Fernand Calment suddenly started pretending that his daughter was his wife seems rather pertinent. This seems to assume a lot about the nature of their personal and social life. According to the Wikipedia article they didn't even live in the same apartment while they were married, so perhaps they weren't seen together in public. > Meanwhile Jeanne was apparently able to name old professors and maids of hers, things that her daughter would probably not have known or remembered. Really? If you're going to go assume someone else's identity with their cooperation and you're not stupid you're going to find out every little detail about their past life and remember it.