And a debunking of the debunker (Criticizing Saul Newman’s commentary):
There was a story this week in the Economist:
Here is a link to the full Economist Article: https://archive.ph/7XLYC
A response from Robert Young of the GRG Supercentenarian Research and Database Division
The Economist should have done more vetting before putting out this ridiculous story.
It looks to be a re-tread of this NONSENSE:
It’s not often I wholly dismiss an alleged “academic”, but the facts of the matter are that Saul Newman’s “junk debunkings” have been repeatedly rejected for publication by many peer reviewers, and he has a history of faking data, including a 2019 attack on the GRG which was rejected for publication. When I asked him in 2019 what “GRG data” he actually used, he was unwilling to provide any actual data…a clear sign that someone is HOAXING. Saul Newman went so far as to ridiculously claim that persons age 110+ can’t be proven to exist…the mainstream demographic community consider him “fringe” and not reliable, and he has associated with Nikolay Zak, the Russian fringer who attacked the Jeanne Calment case. Quite ironic that a “debunker” or two is actually making false debunkings. That said…two wrongs don’t make a right. Dan Buettner’s “Blue Zones” concepts, which unfairly transmogrified a scientific concept from Dr. Michel Poulain of Belgium, is a marketing of anecdotes that have some quasi-beneficial truths to it…for example, I agree that much of his diet and exercise advice is useful…but fail scientific tests of rigor under scrutiny (but not Saul Newman scrutiny). What’s NOT useful is picking 5 places on the map and falsely claiming that these are the “only” special (read: magical, exotic regions that a paid cruise to would help the user live longer) when in fact much of what is being said can be expanded to larger macro-regions. Much of the Mediterranean has favorable diet, culture, lifestyle, and climate, so why pretend that “only” the islands of Sardinia and Ikaria are special, when in fact we see the macroregions including Mediterranean Spain, France, and mainland Italy and most Greek islands showing similar favorable longevity? Let’s not forget that the current “Oldest Living Person”, Maria Branyas Morera of Spain, 116, lives in a region of Spain within the “Mediterranean” watershed, yet not a so-called “Blue Zone”. Lucile Randon (1904-2023), the previous “Oldest Living Person” from France, lived in the Mediterranean region of France also…why not call this a “Blue Zone” also?
Continuing with this half-truth, here is some more recent “Blue Zone” coverage:
On the one hand, it is true that certain communities can have a greater LIFE EXPECTANCY if they practice a lot of healthy practices.
On the other hand, it’s wrong to suggest that only certain marketed regions have these advantages. It’s also wrong to use terms such as “live ten years longer”…high life expectancy is NOT the same as “high life span”. A ten-year “life expectancy” advantage can quickly dwindle to no advantage at the highest ages, especially with such a small population base with relatively low genetic diversity.
We do know that the oldest living persons currently living in California live in northern California (Edie Ceccarelli, 115) in a redwood forest region (favorable climate…why not a Blue Zone?) and Los Angeles, California (Pearl Berg, 114). Neither live in a so-called marketed “Blue Zone”.
On the other hand, much of California has a favorable “Mediterranean” climate, and the state of California overall often shows high super-longevity among the oldest-old, although we know that there are pockets of unfavorable longevity in certain regions of California as well (such as South Central).
Unless a demography group is willing and able to do a worldwide statistical map of human life expectancy and human lifespan data, I think we must understand that the concept of “Blue Zones” remains like weather forecasting: we may get large-scale climate trends right, but individual local results may vary.
The bottom line: the marketed “Blue Zones” health advice on diet, lifestyle, climate, and exercise may be beneficial. Just remember that the picking of so-called “Zones” for this marketing are meant to be examples, not a full survey of every longevous region on Earth, and so not the full picture. If we understand this, we can use our common-sense logic and parse out the good parts, while not swallowing the whole story “hook, line, and sinker”…a fish reference (also a healthy diet option, generally).s
Yes, this does look like the same recycled MISINFORMATION from the similar 2019 story. Why re-run this junk story?
Let’s start with some of the misinformation:
- “And public records can be woefully unreliable. A government audit in 2010 uncovered 230,000 supposedly living Japanese centenarians who were dead or missing.”
This is NOT correct. For those who know the TRUE story: Japan has a long history as a closed, feudal society where every family member is registered in the family register (koseki). That means “no one’s case gets left behind”. What happened is that most of the “230,000” missing “centenarians” were actually persons who died in WWII and whose deaths went officially unreported, since many bodies were never located. There was NEVER an attempt by the government of Japan to claim that there were actually “230,000” living centenarians at the same time. Compare, for example, a recent annual Respect for the Aged Day report from Japan:
The number of centenarians was estimated at 92,139…nowhere near “230,000” despite being the highest estimate ever for Japan.
- Yep, it’s Saul Newman…AGAIN. The same fringe theorist who in 2019 ridiculously claimed that “supercentenarians don’t exist”.
Saul Newman, whose degree is in botany, not the field he is pretending to be an expert in. I think it’s shameful that he is managing to continue to be promoted in the media as an “expert” in a field where he has brought preconceived, erroneous notions and has also has a track record of publishing dubious “debunking” claims. Look more closely: the “research” cited for this Economist article is only a “working paper”, not actually a peer-reviewed journal article.
And let’s continue with some more FACTS.
Fact: Okinawa is not actually among the top 3 Japanese prefectures for life expectancy or centenarian rate:
While Okinawa’s longevity in the past was notable, and it is still high, it’s certainly not extraordinary. There’s really nothing to “debunk” here.
- More false debunking: “Few very old people have birth certificates. Some do not know their true age.” That might be true for the world population as a whole in 1900, but it’s definitely NOT the case for the areas that Saul allegedly studied. Japan, France, Britain, and Italy ALL had total population birth registration by the mid to late 1800s, and there’s clearly NO evidence that these areas continued to have “problems” with false supercentenarian claims in large numbers, with the exception of “paper-error” cases (such as a death went unrecorded, a typographical error, etc). However, those types of errors can be filtered out with the validation process. For data from the GRG and the IDL, the data for these 4 nations is already “cleaned” (filtered to remove false/errant claims) and passes statistical tests of certainty to a degree over 98%.
For the the USA, all areas have had substantial birth registration since 1919, and data prior to that had partial birth registration and lots of census records. While USA cases have some degree of data uncertainty in earlier records, the filtered USA data has shown very similarly to the validated data from Europe and Japan, with similar maximum ages, gender ratios, and annual mortality rates.
In other words, Saul Newman is trying to ‘solve’ a problem that is already resolved.
- The so-called “longevity regions” in his working paper don’t actually match up to his contentions, or his anti-blue zone rhetoric. First off, those marketing the “Blue Zone” concept don’t even claim that France is a “Blue zone”. For Italy, the highest rates of poverty appear to be in Sicily and Calabria, NOT Sardinia. And for Japan, Aomori prefecture has Japan’s lowest rate of life expectancy and among the highest rate of poverty, so once again Saul’s contentions don’t even fit well with his own data.
To be clear, we literally have the Economist perpetrating a “pseudo-debunker” fringe conspiracy theorist as an “Expert” when he has little to no scientific publications in this area and a track record of publications repeatedly turned down, and past false claims made. Kind of hard to believe someone’s credibility when it’s based on making false claims about false claims. It seems more likely that Saul Newman is attempting to attract attention to himself. Ok, so he managed to go from Australia to Oxford. Congratulations. But his Doctorate is in botany, not biogerontology.
If anyone here cares to contact the Economist, please do so. They need to be called out for spreadin misinformation about misinformation.
Sincerely,
Robert D. Young, Director, GRG Supercentenarian Research and Database Division
While I think this idea that these “zones” are super-special or “magical” longevity regions needs to be walked back, it is true that many of these areas have cultures that promote healthy diet and lifestyle.
For example,
The Mediterranean Sea diet, which has long been eaten in Italy, Greece, Spain, and other Mediterranean countries, has been considered a healthy diet, but research has shown that it is related not only to health but also to "youth. Dr. Atsushi Otsuka, Chief Professor of Dermatology, Kinki University School of Medicine, explains based on the latest research results.
I think we are in agreement that cultural “zones” can adapt healthy lifestyle choices, and that studies show that certain climates are also more favorable toward human longevity (mild, sunny “Mediterranean” weather, for example) vs others (Ireland’s cold, wet climate is not favorable for longevity). In any case, despite there being “some” problems with the Blue Zones as a marketing concept, the pseudo-debunking of this idea by a false “expert” with no actual expertise in this field and without data to back up his assertions is concerning. We know, for example, that areas such as Italy and France already had 98+% birth registration by the late 1800s. To falsely claim that high centenarian numbers in these areas of highly-documented populations are caused by “no birth records” is preposterous, and it makes a mockery of the actual debunking work done on pre-validated, not post-validated, data. That this article seems to not understand the distinction between the two is quite concerning.
In short, under scrutiny, Saul Newman’s “debunking” claims are without merit. That the Economist would pick up a “working paper” from a non-expert that hasn’t even been published yet, while not asking anyone else in the field for their views on this topic area, is disappointing.
Sincerely
Robert D. Young, Director, GRG Supercentenarian Research and Database Division
