We know the oldest person who ever lived wasn’t faking her age (2019

theverge.com

15 points·Tomte··7 comments

Title: "How we know the oldest person who ever lived wasn't faking her age"

Content: "Professionals are not convinced by the argument that she faked her age"

Pretty much sums up the state of logical reasoning nowadays.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs. The standard in this case should be to find a proof she lived that long, not a lack of proof she faked her age.

The only way I know of closing this debate would be radiocarbon dating of her tooth enamel (although her last pictures seems to suggest they were long gone).

Of course this would require the consent of her family.

> the journal PLOS Biology published a paper arguing that some exciting conclusions from aging research are caused by statistical error (from bad data if not outright fraud)

Errors as a primary cause of late-life mortality deceleration and plateaus

https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou...

Actually we do not know that, the title is misleading.

Agreed, I was shocked so I read the article thoroughly. But the state of the argument is still the same, evidence in both directions.

Yes. The article doesn't appear to have any new evidence. A few ad-hominem attacks on Nikolay Zak and a few sneering comments about some of Zak's weaker pieces of evidence, but nothing that advances the argument in either direction that I can see.

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