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I read up on this when the article first came out, and what really stood out was the way the supports of Calment's claim / debunkers of the new theory would ign
by kevinpet 5y ago
I read up on this when the article first came out, and what really stood out was the way the supports of Calment's claim / debunkers of the new theory would ignore how their supposed evidence did or did not fit in. IIRC, the Guinness authenticator talked a lot about how they authenticated the birth records and other types of records, which is irrelevant to this particular claim.
- thrwyoilarticle 5y agoHaving briefly looked it up now, I agree. For gerontologists, I can imagine a strong social pressure not to break kayfabe about the jewel of the field. If I'm generous and assume the field is as rigourous as medicine or history, I have to compare it to how frequently those fields have been mistaken. I put zero stock into Guinness World Records. I'm not convinced by the evidence in the link because it's hard to make judgements about so long in the past. But that's exactly why suspicion should be the default stance, with such financial incentives to inflate one's age. For me, claiming that people would have spotted the switch or attacking the qualifications of the authors isn't enough.