The secret of ‘Blue Zones’ where people reach 100? Fake data, says academic
Al Jazeera
University College London researcher is on a mission to debunk shoddy research into the world’s oldest people.
For a quarter-century, researchers and the general public have sought to understand why people in so-called “Blue Zones” live to 100 at far greater rates than anywhere else.
Saul Newman, a researcher at the University College London (UCL), believes he has the answer: actually, they don’t.
Despite being popularised in news articles, cookbooks and even a recent Netflix documentary series, the Blue Zones are really just a by-product of bad data, argues Newman, who has spent years debunking research about extremely elderly populations.
Rather than lifestyle factors such as diet or social connections, he says, the apparent longevity of people in five regions – Okinawa, Japan; Sardinia, Italy; Nicoya, Costa Rica; Ikaria, Greece; and Loma Linda, California – can be explained by pension fraud, clerical errors, and a lack of reliable birth and death records.
Dan Buettner, the American author and explorer credited with coining the term Blue Zone, did not respond to a request for comment.
