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Minnesota Now with Cathy Wurzer
Cathy Wurzer and Gretchen Brown

The secret to a long life? Fraud and shoddy record keeping, says one researcher

A beach with clear and turquoise water and rocks on the horizon.
Sardinia, Italy is one of five places on Earth identified as having a higher than average concentration of centenarians, or people living past 100 years old. A fellow at the University College London Centre for Longitudinal Studies says this is a result of fraud and imprecise birth records.
Tommie Hansen | Flickr

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Many of us are trying to figure out the secret to a long life: why some people live longer and with less disease than the rest of us to 100 years old and beyond.

But new research out of the U.K. appears to debunk most instances of super centenarians, or extra-long lives, as fraud and bad record-keeping.

Saul Newman is behind this research. He is a senior research fellow at the University College London Centre for Longitudinal Studies. MPR News host Cathy Wurzer talked with him about his work, which recently won him an Ig Nobel Award from M.I.T. The award honors scientific achievements that “first make people laugh, then make people think.”

MPR News also reached out to the Blue Zones organization, which formed around the concept of areas of the world where people live significantly longer than elsewhere.

“The claims made by Newman are based on his highly questionable unpublished pre-print,” a Blue Zones spokesperson wrote in a statement. “Blue Zones and Mr. Buettner have debunked Mr. Newman’s hypotheses, which continue to fail to pass any scientific peer review.” The organization also published a blog post refuting the research.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

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We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.