The 2024 Ig Nobel Prize in Demography was awarded to Saul Justin Newman for his research highlighting flaws in record-keeping systems in areas famous for their supercentenarians. His work explored the inconsistencies in birth and death records, particularly in regions like Okinawa, Japan and parts of Italy and Greece, where a disproportionate number of people have claimed to achieve extreme longevity (so-called “Blue Zones”). Newman found that many of these claims were likely due to errors or gaps in documentation, rather than true biological longevity.
While longevity in these Blue Zones has been attributed to diet, social connections and favorable genetics, Newman found that these sub-regions also corresponded to regions characterized by low incomes, low literacy rates, high crime rates, and short lifespans.
Newman’s findings suggested that the impressive number of supercentenarians in these Blue Zones is often inflated due to poor record-keeping practices, such as underreporting deaths or misattributing births. In some cases, these mistakes may even stem from pension fraud, where family members continue to report elderly relatives as alive to keep receiving benefits. By revealing these statistical anomalies, Newman’s work calls into question the validity of many of these extreme longevity claims.
The Ig Nobel Prizes, established in 1991 by the science humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research, are awarded annually to celebrate unusual or humorous scientific achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think,” highlighting the fun and unexpected side of research.
As the late science communicator Carl Sagan has stated, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Newman’s research makes us rethink popular perceptions of longevity hotspots and highlights the necessity of reliable demographic data, which are critical in fields like public health and gerontology, which rely on accurate data to understand aging and develop effective policies to support older populations.
Read Newman’s research here.
Read an interview with Saul Justin Newman about his Ig Nobel-winning research here.