Archicentenarians Wiki



       This wiki comes from the paper Review of Longevity Validations at Extreme Ages

Scientists who specialise in the study of supercentenarian lifespans warn us of the inherent dangers and pitfalls that have dogged the history of human longevity record keeping. Many people who were believed to be the oldest person in their day turned out to be younger than claimed. In recent decades validators have sought to apply more robust and objective standards for scientific age checking, but have they succeeded? It’s an important question. The demographics of extreme ages have had surprisingly far-reaching applications beyond promoting the wellbeing of the aged. Influence has ranged from setting the price of our pension annuities to guiding governments on retirement age and other planning policies. In this work we review longevity validations at the top of the official lists of the world’s oldest ever men and women. In a few cases, such as the lives of Sarah Knauss, Christian Mortensen and Israel Kristal we have found new evidence that improves confidence in their validation, but for others our search casts serious doubt on authenticity, or leaves questions over whether the standard of validation is good enough. Having previously disputed the longevity of Jeanne Calment, we now add Mathew Beard and Johnson Parks from the US to those who should be invalidated, and we question whether birth records for Japanese supercentenarians can be considered reliable. Taken as a whole our findings could affect conclusions reached by demographers about the future of life expectancy.

See the List of Archicentenarians

  