Okinawa, Japan, has one of the world's highest proportions of people over 100. (Photo credit: philipjbigg / Alamy Stock Photo)
From the swimming habits of dead trout to the discovery that some mammals can breathe through their anuses, a group of leading leftist scientists showed up to MIT to present their findings for the 34th annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. Not to be confused with the actual Nobel Prizes, the Ig Nobels are awarded for scientific discoveries that “make people laugh, and then think.”
We spoke to one of this year’s laureates, Saul Justin Newman, a senior research fellow at the Centre for Longitudinal Studies at University College London. His research has shown that most claims about people living to 105 are untrue.
How did you find out about your award?
I answered the phone after trudging through traffic and rain and called a guy in Cambridge, UK. He told me about the prize and the first thing that came to my mind was a woman collecting snot from whales and a levitating frog. I said, “I definitely want to be part of this club.”
How did the ceremony go?
The ceremony was wonderful. It's a bit funny in a big, fancy room. It's like you take the most serious ceremony and make fun of every element of it.
But does your work really make a huge difference?
I became interested in this topic when I debunked a couple of Nature and Science papers about extreme aging in the 2010s. In general, claims about human lifespans are largely untrue. I tracked 80% of people over 110 in the world (the other 20% are from countries that can’t be analyzed well). Almost none of them had a birth certificate. In the United States, there are more than 500 such people; only seven have a birth certificate. Moreover, only 10% have a death certificate.
A prime example of this are the Blue Zones, which are regions where people supposedly reach 100 years of age with astonishing speed. They have been touted to the public for nearly 20 years. They are the subject of numerous scientific papers, a popular Netflix documentary, and numerous cookbooks on topics such as the Mediterranean diet, etc.
Okinawa in Japan is one such area. In 2010, the Japanese government conducted a survey that showed that 82% of people over 100 in Japan were dead. The secret to living to 110 is to not register your death.
The Japanese government has conducted one of the largest nutrition studies in the world since 1975. Since then, Okinawa has been considered the worst health in Japan. They consume the least amount of vegetables and are heavy drinkers.
What about other places?
The same goes for all the other blue zones. Eurostat tracks life expectancy in Sardinia, an Italian blue zone, and Ikaria in Greece. When the agency first started collecting data in 1990, Sardinia had the 51st highest life expectancy among older people in Europe out of 128 regions, and Ikaria was 109th. The cognitive dissonance is astonishing. I estimate that at least 72% of centenarians in Greece are dead, missing, or effectively victims of pension fraud.
Sourse: www.livescience.com
