Photo: Jiroemon Kimura, who may have died at age 116. But maybe not.
A darkly comedic journey into the science of aging — where ethics are irrelevant, studies are a sales pitch, and the “world’s oldest living people” all turn out to be dead…
— from the blurb for the book ‘Morbid: Debunking Modern Longevity Science’ by Saul Justin Newman, to be published later this year by MIT Press.
Some of us want to live as long as possible. We might even make an effort in that general direction.
Maybe we watch our diet? Work out at the gym? Get regular check-up? Say our nightly prayers?
Jiroemon Kimura, who is on record as the world’s oldest man, died in 2013 at the reported age of a hundred and sixteen. Naturally, some people — including journalists, and also scientists — wanted to learn the secret to his very long life.
It wasn’t much of a secret, as it turned out.
He didn’t overeat. He subscribed to the Japanese practice called hara hachi bun mi, which translates, roughly, as “Eat until you are eight parts full.” Meaning, eight parts out of ten, or 80%, full. In other words, don’t eat until you are satisfied.
This philosophy, as practiced particularly in southern Japan, has been credited with producing an unusual number of centenarians.
Rather than live for 70 years feeling full and satiated, the Japanese prefer to be constantly unsatisfied for 100 years.
Or maybe they don’t? Maybe longevity research is actually rife with fraud?
Take the world’s oldest man, for example.
Jiroemon Kimura was supposedly born in Kyoto in March or April of 1897. But his name wasn’t Jiroemon Kimura. His name was Kinjiro Miyake, and strangely enough, Kinjiro Miyake appears to have graduated from elementary school in 1907… and also in 1909… and also in 1911. According to marriage records, he married his wife on three different dates, and then supposedly adopted his wife’s surname, and also changed his first name.
Demographers who attempted to validate his age, wrote that their investigation uncovered “irregularities and inconsistencies.”
Equally strange stories about “the world’s oldest men and women” can be found in a paper entitled, “Supercentenarian and remarkable age records exhibit patterns indicative of clerical errors and pension fraud,” by Oxford University professor Saul Justin Newman, who will have a book on the same topic coming out later this year.
His paper notes, for example:
In the United States, supercentenarian status is predicted by the absence of vital registration. The state-specific introduction of birth certificates is associated with a 69-82% fall in the number of supercentenarian records.
In other words, it’s much, much easier to live to be older than 100 if you have no birth certificate.
Only 18% of ‘exhaustively’ validated supercentenarians have a birth certificate, falling to zero percent in the USA…
Dr. Newman found that, statistically, the best predictor of a large number of centenarians in a given population, was not regular exercise and a healthy diet, but rather, relative poverty, a high crime rate, and low per-capita incomes.
The question that comes to mind is, of course: Why would anyone want to present themselves as older than they really are?
Answer: “money.”
I’m fairly sure that I’m 62 years old, because I have a birth certificate that states I was born in 1964. Also, my parents consistently claimed that I was born in 1964. (I was in fact present at my birth, but wasn’t paying any attention to what year it was.)
But if I had, somehow, gotten my hands on a birth certificate that stated I was born eight year earlier — in, say, 1956 — I could right now apply for the maximum monthly amount of Social Security.
Additionally, I would live eight years longer, without even trying. I would definitely have a much better chance of living to be 100.
An exceptionally long life, in Dr. Newman’s telling, is not necessarily a function of good genes, good behaviors, or good luck. It’s more likely to be evidence of bad record-keeping. And possibly, pension fraud.
I’ve heard that a knowledgeable horse trader can tell a horse’s age by looking at the animal’s teeth. Horses, like humans, are born with two sets of teeth, and by age 5, they have a full set of permanent teeth. Additionally, you can look for specific markers like the disappearance of cups on the teeth and the presence of ‘Galvayne’s groove’ as the horse ages.
Dr. Newman didn’t mention this validation method in his paper, for whatever reason.
Nevertheless, his paper was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize in 2024 from the Annals of Improbable Research at MIT.
Dr. Newman is on the left. I’m guessing the other two people are his parents?
I’m not going to guess how old his parents are. And he probably isn’t going to, either, knowing what he knows.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all. You can read more stories on his Substack account.