Posted by: @pgibbs

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In reply to ChrisR

> At a very high level this extraordinary case does have an extraordinary level of proof.

There is certainly a lot of documentation but all the available evidence is consistent with the switch scenario that Zak identified*. Furthermore there is a great deal of evidence that is unlikely if the switch scenario were false. There are certainly many documents that include Jeanne. The ones from before 1933 are all genuine records of Jeanne Calment's life. The death certificate for Yvonne is a fraud because it was Jeanne who had died. All later documents are incorrect but each one follows from those before it. It therefore does not matter how many documents are produced. There is only one that needs to be considered when checking her authenticity. For other evidence it is necessary to look for other clues such as the change of signature.

(* several others had considered the same possibility before independently, but it was only with recent improved access to documents that a convincing case could be made)

> In addition the vast majority of the solid legally documented evidence occurred well before anyone had any idea whatsoever, that she would live so long. That is the strongest evidence.

This is not important. Everybody leaves a trail of documents. Whatever age she was going to live to the documentation would have been the same.

> To begin to offset that we would need other solid documentation of the same type - eg Jeanne Calment being admitted to a sanitarium, proof of forged death certificates etc etc. 

The paperwork from the sanatorium is not available. It was probably destroyed for privacy reasons. There is nevertheless evidence that Jeanne had tuberculosis and was treated in Leysin in 1931 rather than Yvonne. Yvonne had been treated and recovered in 1928. This evidence includes the testimony of the family of Dr Gilbert, the photo of Yvonne and Jeanne together in Leysin with Jeanne being underweight, and medical data for Mme Calment that would be consistent with them both having had tuberculosis.

We can not expect direct proof that the death certificate was forged. It was signed and registered in the same way as any death certificate would be. The only sense in that it was forged is that it was really Jeanne who died not Yvonne. The evidence that this must have happened is everything else. I don't think it is reasonable to demand particular items of evidence that can't exist while ignoring all the evidence that does exist.

> They attempt to offset this strong documentation with verbal mistakes made by a very elderly woman, under friendly questioning about events that had occurred many decades earlier. We will all make verbal mistakes of this type when asked about past things - even when we’re very young.

In Zak's original paper he cited a few irregularities in her testimony based on what was available in the validators' books. When we did the Bayesian analysis we put the testimonial evidence aside because it was second hand information and the possibility of her making simple mistakes made it less convincing. There was still enough evidence without that testimony to favour the switch scenario.

In January 2022 INSERM released 15 hours of the original recordings from the interviews. We analysed them and were shocked at how clear it became that she was not just making random errors of memory. There are too many details to elaborate here, but she was always making mistakes in a way that betrayed her identity as Yvonne rather than Jeanne. The recordings are available online so our conclusions can be checked by anyone who understands French. This testimony now substantially increases the evidence in favour of the switch.

> Their fabrication of information liked “very private funerals” “large money legacies” and similar, also discredit their theory and its providers and therefore from a legal perspective would act against them in any other factor where they disagree with others. IE they confirm themselves as providers of unreliable information, in respect of their claim.

Nothing has been fabricated. Everything we claim can be independently checked. We have not said that the funeral was very private. In Zak's first paper he said "It was a very public event" The identity switch had taken place 12 to 24 months before the funeral. Nothing needed to be hidden at that time. 

Although the financial motive remains, it was never likely to be strong enough on its own to justify what they did. We now understand a different motive. They were hiding the illness of Jeanne and saying that it was Yvonne who had pleurisy. To cover they Yvonne forged some signatures. Yvonne's husband needed to have his army leave extended. he had originally taken leave five years earlier when his wife Yvonne was ill. To extend his leave they needed to say that Yvonne was ill again. They had built a web of lies over a number of years before Jeanne died unexpectedly. If they confessed at that point they would be in serious trouble because of those lies. They had to continue the masquerade to avoid a scandal. This is a much stronger motive. It fits perfectly with the records.

> In terms of the “weight” given to certain arguments, if the full documentary evidence had a weight of 1000 kilos, the verbal responses which they rely on may have a weight of 1 kilo before you allow for the fact that the transcript has come from and unreliable provider.

As I said previously, we were not relying on the testimonial evidence at all. When the recordings was published we discovered that it reinforced the switch even more. If anybody thinks our transcripts or translations are wrong they can easily be checked, so this is not an argument against us.

> in addition, for their claim to be correct so many people would have had to have told lies and covered up things that the they knew. For lawyers, funeral directors and others the consequences of being caught could have been prison sentences. So what are the chance so many people would tell lies?

There were no lying lawyers, funeral directors, doctors or priests. All had been taken in by the preceding identity switch and reported what they believed. This is how a lie takes hold. At the beginning only Jeanne, Yvonne, Joseph, Fernand and perhaps a few other close relatives knew. Other people would believe it because they all acted like it was true. The more people believe it, the easier it becomes to convince even more people. The validators said that they were convinced because so many other people already believed her. They failed to take into account that everyone else was thinking the same way except those few people who were originally in on the secret, and most of them had since died.

> And finally I come back to the first point I made to the terrible  twins then they turned up, being that other witnesses came forth (many from her own home town) with more details to support her, when the matter was being looked at once more. 

There are no witnesses left than can verify her story. The oldest now is Robert Billot but he was too young to identify Jeanne or Yvonne before the funeral. He did say that a photo of Jeanne from shortly before is definitely not the woman he knew as a child. This can only confirm the switch, not refute it. There were actually very few close family members left. Those who had known her had accepted the lie. They had no reason not to believe it, but we do.

> The validation notes above have always made very compelling reading and the review even made the case slightly stronger. The review was good for the case.

I strongly disagree. All that has been said in her favour is easily debunked. Most of our opposition spend more time trying to discredit our motives than looking at the evidence we have collected. There is no one item of evidence that betrays her, but the combination of all the evidence weighs very heavily. If I throw two dice and get a double six, anyone can claim I was just lucky. If I keep doing it then at some point they have to accept that the dice are loaded. Calment's supporters can say that she just decided on a whim to refresh her signature at age 58, that she kept making mistakes in her interviews that just happened to make her sound like Yvonne, that she lied about her meeting with Van Gogh to please journalists, that she was just very lucky to live three years longer than anyone would for at least the next thirty years, etc, there is much more. Any one of these things on their own can be dismissed as chance, but put them all together and there is a compelling case for an identity switch.

 

Have you ever heard of Occam's Razor?

Why should we ignore a rock solid unfailing paper trail covering her entire lifespan in favour of hunches and speculation coming from someone with questionable motives?

The problem with the Jeanne Calment debate is that for people who doubt her claim, NOTHING will ever be enough. As the counter-investigation group stated in an interview, even if her DNA confirmed her identity, Zak would still find a way to claim it was rigged.

The whole thing gets increasingly conspiracy-theory-ish with every refutation.

You seek to overturn a 122.4 year continual sequence of documents, within a very narrow time window during that period and with no documents of your own.

And if a switch was planned then one of the first things to be done would be to practice for a while until you could duplicate the other persons signature. It’s not hard at all for most humans to achieve this type of outcome. Just needs practice and effort.

If someone debunks the Jeanne Calment case then fine by me - I’m not a sentimental individual in any way, shape or form.

But you don’t come anywhere near.

I’ll reconsider if you find anything plausible to support your position. But for now I’ll be ignoring your presence on this Forum.

@pgibbs I saw the interview with Dr. Gilbert's son and he didn't really say anything that supported Calment being a hoax. I went into the Calment conspiracy theory with the benefit of the doubt, but after watching the interview, it has not convinced me. In fact, it has done the opposite, it made me think that the interview had no credibility to it. 

I do agree partially with you in one area and that's the area where it is statistically unlikely Calment was the first to make it to 115-122. However I think the reason for this is that there were others that reached above 115 first and just not verified due to documentation not being as strong in those days. I will also say due to my recent realization of how rare it actually is to reaching these ages, I will say for certain that if there were people that reached these ages before Calment, there was just a handful. And there was probably no one who made it past Calment's age. Jeanne just got very lucky to have the documentation to prove it. There was at least 1 missing person to fill in the age gaps between 115-122, but likely not more than I'd say maybe 10? Just a personal guess. And the majority of these missing people, if not all, were probably 115-117. 

I might be wrong on my calculations, but here are my thoughts to make the statistics come out more believable, and debunk that theory.

(At the time of Calment's death)

122: Calment

121: 0

120: 0

119: 0 (Reached soon after by Knauss)

118: 1 missing person

117: 1 missing person & a living Sarah Knauss 

116: 3 missing people

115: 3 missing people, Holtz, Mortensen 

(8 missing people total)

My guess is that if every person had been validated since 1675 we would be able to fill in the gaps and therefore debunk this "theory of statistics". And I'm only choosing 1675 as a random year because it is 200 years before Calment, it's not backed by science. If I had the knowledge to prove this with math, I would, but this kind of stuff is beyond me.

I was also thinking about this earlier today, and THEORETICALLY IT IS POSSIBLE for someone to live to see their 200th birthday, but proven by the math that @futurist helped me figure out earlier, the chances would be so small that there is probably a bigger chance of the Sun falling out of the sky tomorrow, landing in my backyard, and bouncing in to my house through my bedroom window. My personal belief on this now is that people over 130 do not exist. They are in the same category as LIVING dinosaurs, abominable snowmen, and fairies. Theoretically possible, but the chances are so small, it's not worth investigating.

Take this from someone who just a couple months ago had the complete opposite opinion. I was planning on digging deep into the case of Yekini Ogundare (1879-Present), but now that I see how small the chances of this being true are, I won't look into it any more. 

I say it with a heavy heart that people above 130 probably don't exist. It's sad to think of it that way as I want to believe it so badly, but the scientific truth is that the odds are so low it's no longer worth investigating at the moment. Like someone, I believe it was @chrisr said unless there's a major scientific breakthrough it hasn't happened yet. 

Posted by: @beaumont

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Have you ever heard of Occam's Razor?

Why should we ignore a rock solid unfailing paper trail covering her entire lifespan in favour of hunches and speculation coming from someone with questionable motives?

The problem with the Jeanne Calment debate is that for people who doubt her claim, NOTHING will ever be enough. As the counter-investigation group stated in an interview, even if her DNA confirmed her identity, Zak would still find a way to claim it was rigged.

The whole thing gets increasingly conspiracy-theory-ish with every refutation.

I wrote an article about Occam's Razor 25 years ago that has been cited in 84 scientific papers according to Google Scholar.

People's lives are complicated. The Calment family were not average people with simple lives. An exceptional amount of information about their history is available in public records and interviews with Mme Calment. Did you know that Yvonne Calment's husband Joseph commanded a battalion near Epinal defending France against German advances? He was finally defeated a few days before the Vichy government was formed but escaped capture. He then fought with General Dentz as acting Colonel in Syria for Vichy forces but they came into conflict with the British and Free French and were captured before being returned to Arles in 1941 where Joseph protected Mme Calment and his son Freddy during the allied bombardments. It is a fascinating episode in their lives that is well documented but never reported. There is even a remarkable photo of Colonel Billot in Syria with Dentz That one of our researchers uncovered. It is just one example of many surprising things we discovered about the family history.

The switch scenario is not pure speculation. It is a best fit to the evidence we have. As I said there is a lot of that evidence. The scenario that she was authentic is not a good fit. Unfortunately there is not one isolated piece of evidence that proves the switch, but the compendium of evidence puts it beyond reasonable doubt.

The problem with the "paper trail" is that is only takes one error in the official record and all subsequent documents copy it. Officials do not investigate the correctness of vital records or the census unless there is a complaint. They rely of people's declarations under oath. A good example is the case of Carrie C White whose longevity was accepted because it appeared to be confirmed by a long series of census and other state records. It turned out that she had been confined to a mental home on dubious grounds and an incorrect record of her age at that time was then copied repeatedly over many years. In the case of Calment you have to look further, but even in the documents we found that her clear change in signature gave away the truth.

Your statement that "nothing will ever be enough" is a meta-argument that can be applied equally to both sides and therefore has no substance. Also it is not true. If a DNA test was conducted properly and confirmed her authenticity we would have to accept it. If we didn't it would not matter because the evidence would be against us. However I think that is a very unlikely outcome given all the evidence we now have against her authenticity.

The origin of questions about our motives come purely from two people in another forum who have recently been disgraced in the eyes of many. I dont want to dwell on this but they concocted two implausible conspiracy theories about our motives and spread lies to convince many people. I can answer specific questions about that in PM if anyone asks. We are now an international group of researchers from Russia, UK and France. Our motive is that her case is both interesting and scientifically important and we want to correct the record. We don't question the motives of our opponents in the debate or people in this forum who dedicate a lot of their spare time to similar research. We don't ask you to trust us. We only ask that you look at the evidence that can be checked and requires no expert knowledge to understand.

Posted by: @chrisr

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You seek to overturn a 122.4 year continual sequence of documents, within a very narrow time window during that period and with no documents of your own.

And if a switch was planned then one of the first things to be done would be to practice for a while until you could duplicate the other persons signature. It’s not hard at all for most humans to achieve this type of outcome. Just needs practice and effort.

If someone debunks the Jeanne Calment case then fine by me - I’m not a sentimental individual in any way, shape or form.

But you don’t come anywhere near.

I’ll reconsider if you find anything plausible to support your position. But for now I’ll be ignoring your presence on this Forum.

 

We have compiled a lot of documentary evidence. How can we direct you to it without being accused of self-promotion?

When Yvonne had to forge the signatures she was having to deal with her seriously ill mother, a family business that would be strained by economic depression, and looming war that her husband would be called up for. She might not have time to calmly sit down and prepare for the coming events. We have compared her signature to six examples from 1924 to 1932, but these were from archived documents that Yvonne would not have easy access to. Some of these were obtained by Zak using archival requests. The signatures in those documents were very stable, but twenty years earlier her signature had been more varied. Yvonne would have looked at her mother's old signed paintings on the wall (we found two of these), her passport that could be at least 20 years old, and her parent's marriage contract from 37 years earlier that she would have been shown by the notary. The signature Yvonne forged was initially variable based on those. It can therefore be distinguished from the stable signature that her mother had been using for at least the previous ten years, Her mother had become used to signing important legal and financial documents. It is inconceivable that she would suddenly decide to change it and then not be able to make up her mind how the new signature would look.

Posted by: @aquanaut

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@pgibbs I saw the interview with Dr. Gilbert's son and he didn't really say anything that supported Calment being a hoax. I went into the Calment conspiracy theory with the benefit of the doubt, but after watching the interview, it has not convinced me. In fact, it has done the opposite, it made me think that the interview had no credibility to it. 

I think there might be some misunderstanding here about the role that Gilbert's testimony plays in the evidence.

When we geolocated the picture of Yvonne with a parasol on a terrace to the Belvedere sanatorium in Leysin in 1931. Calment's supporters thought it was evidence that she had indeed died. We already suspected that Yvonne had been ill and this was confirmed when a letter was found showing that Joseph had taken leave from the army due to her bad health in 1928. Mme Calment says she was treated at a sanatorium in the Savoie (not Leysin) when she fell ill shortly after giving birth in 1927. However, from 1929, 1930 and 1931 there are photos showing Yvonne at public events looking healthy in Arles. Another photo from this time shows Yvonne and Jeanne together. Yvonne looks well here too, but Jeanne looks thin (compared to another photo) and appears to offered a present and flowers. The validators confused who was who in this picture because they thought Yvonne would be the one who was ill. 

We have examined that photo carefully. Zak even reconstructed a model to see where the sun must have been to cast the shadows. We are now almost certain that this photo was taken on the same terrace of the Belvedere as the parasol picture and at the same time. This further supports the case that it was Jeanne who was ill there. Another item of evidence are the medical studies carried out on Mme Calment in late life. These show that she must have had some pulmonary disease despite always claiming that she was never ill.

Zak went to Leysin to try and find more evidence and was put in touch with the son of Dr Gilbert who was the director of the Belvedere in 1931. His testimony confirmed that it was indeed Jeanne who was treated there. If there was only this evidence it might be doubtful, but all the evidence I have described points to this conclusion. Gilbert is a respectable person and he is certain of his testimony. He has no reason to get involved in misinformation.

This still leaves open the question of whether it was Yvonne or Jeanne who died in 1934. If it was Yvonne then she had to have a relapse some four years after her recovery while Jeanne recovered. This is not impossible. You then need to look at other evidence such as the signature change and Mme Calment's inconsistent testimony to determine who it was that died. Gilbert's testimony confirming that Jeanne was ill just illuminates some of the criticism that we are making this part up as speculation. 

Your ideas about the statistics are interesting. You could be right, but in my opinion the list of supercentenarians is more complete than you think. I could be wrong but our analysis of the statistics shows that the expected MRAD (Maximum Recorded Age at Death) has increased at one year per decade since the 1990s and is now about 119 years. This makes Calment an outlier by about 5 years. Knauss was also an outlier by about two years but her validation is stronger and her longevity is much more plausible. For Knauss to exist it is as if someone throw one dice and got a six. For Calment it is like someone throw three dice and got three sixes. Zak has been accused of basing his claims on this probability alone but that is not true. If this was the only evidence it would not be enough, but probabilities combine and everything should be taken into account. By the way Jean-Marie Robine who validated Calment has made even stronger statements than us about how much of a statistical outlier she was. He said in the press recently that his studies indicate that mortality rates at high age (>107) are higher than previously thought. He will publish on this soon. It will be interesting to see how this modifies his assessment of Calment.  

I agree with you that it is statistically unlikely that anyone has lived to 130. I think it is about level odds that anyone has yet lived past 120 and been unrecorded or unverified. With increasing longevity the probability drops off with exponential decay from there. There remains a possibility that someone had a very lucky combination of genes. I am not an expert on biology but I understand that there are problems with this idea. one cause of aging is telomere shortening which eventually prevents cells from subdividing. This can be counteracted e.g. with telomerase, but that leads to uncontrolled division and so cancers. Any medical advance that increases longevity would need to overcome this problem and others. Artificial treatments may work but natural genetic options seem less likely, so extraordinarily long-lived claims are not plausible. I encourage you keep studying your ideas.

I think I agree with ChrisR and won't respond any further, as I have said already it is my belief no evidence will ever be enough.

This is a discredited fringe theory and Calment's recognised authenticity is in no danger. I have no reason to get involved.

That being said I respect your right to believe whatever you want, with regards to convincing others, I wouldn't get your hopes up.

Posted by: @admin

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... The "evidence" provided by the alternative research is without any context (such as the "transcript" of snippets of the interview not being in French and being very incomplete) and is thus very manipulative, yet presented as "the truth"...

I wasn't able to respond to this earlier, but in our publications we provide transcripts in French for all used quotes from Mme Calment's interviews, in addition to the English translations. We also provide details of the interview and the time where the quotes are taken from. These can be checked on the INSERM website. In short these assertions about our evidence and motives are pure gaslighting.

Posted by: @930310

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@pgibbs I have personally researched over 3 000 supercentenarians and collected documentation and articles about them and their lives. So contrary to what you believe, I actually know what I'm doing and how age validation works. Arguing a different point of view to yours do

I just wanted to come back to this to mention that I am aware of your excellent work. In fact we credited two of your contributions in our published Review of Longevity Validations.

Posted by: @930310

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@stoa-oid they are mathematicians and not gerontologists. Arguing that they are more correct because they have PhDs is like entrusting people with degrees in economics to determine your dietary needs.

No gerontology expertise has been required in our work except the original observations of Valery Novoselov who prompted Zak to begin his study. Novoselov is a gerontologist. Our research has consisted of searching for documents and reports, translating interviews etc. The Bayesian inference sections required some very basic mathematics knowledge but the details can be skipped over. I would say that the only real differences between the kind of work we have done and what you are doing to research supercentenarians is that we write up our work as scientific reports and publish in that form.

I don't think anyone here needs to take anything on authority because of a need for expertise they don't have. Our reasoning and evidence is easily checked.

@pgibbs great that you are writing scientific papers. I am too. I have a paper that I am looking for a suitable journal to publish in, any suggestions?

Posted by: @930310

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@pgibbs great that you are writing scientific papers. I am too. I have a paper that I am looking for a suitable journal to publish in, any suggestions?

That's excellent. I am going to send you something in PM.

Edit: @930310 hope my PM reached you

@pgibbs thank you for your nice words encouraging me to continue my studies on statistics. 

It would be great to have you here on this forum to continue making posts, but I think we should all give the Calment theory a break for a while. I may have misunderstood, but if I understood correctly they are planning to compare Jeanne's DNA with that of Yvonne's. I think we should all wait until this has occurred, and then continue with the Calment theory, because this will either highly strengthen her case or likely debunk it. 

I understand now that the maximum age recorded at death has increased about 1 year per decade making anyone over 117 an outlier in the 90s. This totally makes even more sense to me now that 130 year old people sadly don't exist. I think the MRAD will continue increasing till we reach a ceiling. I also think it will speed up, but very slowly. To me, since the MRAD is now around 119, I think there could currently be maybe 1 or 2 living people who are 118+, strengthening my ideas of 118+ claims. But I need to look into it further.

@pgibbs if you don't mind me asking, when do you think we'll see our first 117 year old man? I personally think it ought to be soon, but I could be wrong. I think it ought to be sometime in this decade. And when do you think for women, age 120 will become the new 117? I think we'll have as many 120 year old women in the 2050s (hopefully 2040s), as we have 117 year old women today.

Posted by: @aquanaut

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@pgibbs if you don't mind me asking, when do you think we'll see our first 117 year old man? I personally think it ought to be soon, but I could be wrong. I think it ought to be sometime in this decade. And when do you think for women, age 120 will become the new 117? I think we'll have as many 120 year old women in the 2050s (hopefully 2040s), as we have 117 year old women today.

I investigated some projections with nzak.

Interesting that the living men's oldest list is currently dominated by South America. I would assume that the rule of thumb that men are three years behind women will remain true. The expected MRAD should reach 120 for women and 117 for men around 2030, but then chance comes into play. We can be optimistic that these milestones will be realised before 2050.

Covid and strained health services have taken their toll on the generation of future supercentenarians. At some point new medical research might emerge and it is hard to predict its effect. Also constant mortality rates cannot be assumed above 118. It is difficult to anticipate the consequences of climate change, AI automation, etc.

If we skip over these big unknowns, the UN projects centenarian numbers to keep doubling every decade until at least 2050 which could mean that the 1 year increase per decade continues until at least 2070, but it could also plateau sooner if mortality rates stay higher than 50% pa. I think that an MRAD above 125 will require some significant progress with anti-aging medical research. Living past 120 is much harder than many gerontologists think because Calment gave them false hope. 

@pgibbs I agree 100%

I think it's likely we'll see our first 117 year old man and another 120 year old woman by 2030. I also think that by 2050 a 120 year old woman will be as common as a 117 year old woman is now. 

I know we're not supposed to predict, but in my opinion I was very impressed that Mr. Goncalino Norberto was able to chop wood at 110, and Mr. Rafael Chinchilla could beat down his own Pinata at 110. Both are unverified, but if either is the actual age claimed, I think they are healthy enough to reach 117. Mr. Carlos Garzon seems extremely healthy at 112, but his age has been cast into doubt and he might only be 107.

As for the women, all the pre 1910 ones still look strong. Tatsumi looks frail but has never been seriously ill and has no underlying conditions. I think one will hit at least 118. But only time will tell, not predictions.

I'd also like to ask you what your thoughts are on Mr. Jose Flores Flores, Mrs. Batuli Lamichhane, Mrs. Guadalupe Garcia, and Mr. Seliman Bandang? I personally think that of all the claimants (not unverified cases) these 4 have the strongest possibility of being the age claimed, with Lamichhane's correct year of birth being 1903, not 1900. I personally have never seen any evidence against any of these cases, however I do agree that there is not enough evidence yet to say they are certain. Lamichhane being nearly 120 is a very unlikely age, and she could be a few years younger. And Bandang looks unusually young for an SC, but he may have taken exceptionally good care of his skin to slow aging. I've said on this forum before, I think they're worth looking into more, what's your opinion?

Posted by: @aquanaut

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I'd also like to ask you what your thoughts are on Mr. Jose Flores Flores, Mrs. Batuli Lamichhane, Mrs. Guadalupe Garcia, and Mr. Seliman Bandang? 

It is very hard to investigate their claims without being in these countries, speaking the language and being able to look for the original records. It is good to see an organised validation group in South America that is now working well. It would be good to see next a similar group formed for the Asian countries that are not well covered. Perhaps it is already happening.