Work challenging ‘Blue Zone’ regions of exceptional longevity wins Ig Nobel prize
Thursday, November 14th, 2024
Five regions of the globe are claimed to hold the key to living past 100. Last month, Dr Newman’s investigation into the data behind these claims, saw him take home an Ig Noble, an award that is given for research that “makes people laugh, and then think”. [1]
Centenarian Hotspots
“Blue Zones” are regions where locals can enjoy life expectancies well above average – reaching 100 years old or more[2]. The first to gain the title was the Italian island, Sardinia. Since then, four more areas have been identified to have a statistically improbable number of supercentenarians. These are, Okinawa in Japan; Nicoya in Costa Rica; Ikaria in Greece and Loma Linda in California. The Blue Zones have inspired countless studies, lifestyle interventions, supplements, cookbooks, and even a documentary series[3].
Poor Record keeping and Pension Fraud
However, in a not yet peer reviewed study, Dr Newman from the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing University College London, suggested that the data behind the Blue Zones are flawed[4]. The Australian demographer crosschecked government tables of Centenarian data from several countries of interest. The author argued that supercentenarian status was mostly due to missing or dubious birth certificates. He detailed how the introduction of birth certificates in the United States was associated with a 69-82% fall in supercentenarian numbers. Across countries, he found that only 18% of the oldest old have a birth certificate (falling to zero percent in the USA), and that supercentenarian birthdates were concentrated on days divisible by five; a pattern suggestive of fraud or error. In media reports, Dr Newman describes discovering that the world’s oldest man, Jiroemon Kimura from Japan, had not one but three reported birthdays.
For the Blue Zones of Sardinia, Ikaria and Okinawa, Dr Newman described them as regions with low incomes, low literacy, high crime rate and short life expectancy relative to their national average. He hypothesised that the high poverty rates of these populations bring about age-reporting errors and pension fraud, and that this what accounts for their remarkable age records.
Criticism of the Pre-Print Paper
Newman’s paper (and expertise) has attracted criticism. In an open letter, a few “Blue Zone” researchers highlight that his paper has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, despite having been submitted for publication over four years ago[5]. The demographers and geriatricians detail the rigorous methods behind their data, whilst highlighting concerns about Newman’s system.
At minimum, Newman has helped raise the importance of healthy scepticism in research. Newman concludes that a clear way out of this debate, is to develop better biometric measures of age that do not rely on documents.
[1] https://improbable.com/ig/about-the-ig-nobel-prizes/
[2] https://www.bluezones.com/
[3] https://www.netflix.com/au/title/81214929
[4] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v3
[5] https://danbuettner.com/the-science-behind-blue-zones/
