3 ms·

The same way the accusation of fake record do not provide evidence though, it's just theories.

• TeMPOraL 5y ago
  Yes. But their probabilistic weight differs. You don't have a conclusive proof either way, but on one side you have an extreme outlier event that puzzles the medical science, and on the other you have a garden variety white-collar crime with obvious motive. I know what I'd bet on.
  • lovemenot 5y ago
    >> you have an extreme outlier event ... It's an outlier sure, but how extreme is unclear. France being a developed nation (say 5 - 10% of global population at the time). Jeanne being upper middle-class (again say 5% of France). How many with the potential to live a much longer life did not do so because they lacked Jeanne's social advantages? Or did actually live long, but were not documented. If we could model these premature deaths and fit them into the curve, how much less extreme would Jeanne appear to be?
    • hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
      What you are proposing is basically exactly what the researchers did in their paper, just comparing the data looking at people who were already supercentenarians, not the whole population at large, and found that Calment was a widely improbable outlier even just among this group.
  • gpderetta 5y ago
    Doubting is ok, but accusing someone of crimes based on outlier data can be very dangerous: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucia_de_Berk#Life_sentence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucia_de_Berk#Life_sentence