A paper released last month under the title “Supercentenarians and the oldest-old are concentrated into regions with no birth certificates and short lifespans” is likely to make many longevity researchers and transhumanists re-evaluate their working theories on what determines longevity.

Supercentenarians, or individuals attaining the age of 110, have been the focus of many longevity studies including the sequencing of their genomes, particularly after American explorer Dan Buettner made claims that most of the world’s supercentenarians are located in regions he collectly calls Blue Zones. Some of the most well known Blue Zones that Buettner and longevity researchers focused on are Okinawa in Japan, Sardinia in Italy, and Ikaria in Greece.

The paper by Dr. Justin Saul Newman, a researcher at the Australian National University, concludes that these “Blue Zones” do not exist, and are merely the result of error and fraud. One of the primary causes of error, Dr. Newman notes, is poor record keeping. For example, when record keeping improved in the United States with the introduction of birth certificates, the reported number of supercentenerians fell as drastically as by 69-82%.

Dr. Newman also noticed something particularly odd about Okinawa and Sardinia. Despite these two places reportedly having the world’s oldest people, Okinawa had the lowest national life expectancy in Japan, and Sardinia had one of the lowest life expectancies in Italy. The two places also shared other statistics that do not favor long healthy lives, like low incomes, high illiteracy, higher than average smoking rates, and some of the highest national crimes rates. Things were not that much different for Ikaria where 99% of senior citizens are smokers and drink heavily. The environmental factors of these places clearly back up why they have lower national life expectancies, so it is odd that they also have the world’s oldest people.

“Why would living a relatively short life be linked to living past 110?” Dr. Newman asks in his paper, “It does not make sense. Unless the records in these provinces aren’t kept very well and have a bit of fraud.”

The claim of fraud is not outlandish as pension frauds are common in high-welfare states like Japan, Greece and Italy. To claim early pensions, people will either exaggerate their ages or assume the identities of older – sometimes dead relatives. The Greek island of Ikaria which has a very generous pension, has had several cases of such pension fraud.

But perhaps the most famous case of pension fraud which should have put the Blue Zones theory under scrutiny much earlier, is the case of the Okinawa supercentenarians. In 2010, there was a national scandal in Japan when the government discovered that over 230,000 supercentenarians could not be accounted for! This happened after an inquiry initiated when the remains of Sogen Kato, who was supposed to be 111 years old in 2010 – and then the oldest person alive, were found in his room where they had been mummified for over 30 years!

Although Dr. Newman’s paper concludes that “relative poverty and short lifespan constitute unexpected predictors of centenarian and supercentenarian status, and support a primary role of fraud and error in generating remarkable human age records,” there are other more ‘human, all too human’ factors at play to explain why these remarkable human age records exist. The first factor being what has been observed in many primitive societies – whereby for every 10 years individuals live past the age of 50, they “age” 17 years on average. This is mostly caused by loss of count and in some cases exaggeration because such societies venerate the elderly.

The second factor is the human tendency of Number Heaping, whereby humans have a tendency to round numbers to the nearest 5 or 10. This “number heaping” causes a common phenomenon called Age Heaping, which is the tendency of people with a basic knowledge of mathematics, or who are unaware of their true age, to round their age to the nearest 5 or 10.

Combine these two related factors with record keeping errors, the aforementioned absence of birth certificates, people using the identities of older or dead relatives, and you have the remarkable supercentenarian triple digit age numbers.

Blue Zones have long been used to advocate for plant-based diets because Buettner described plant-heavy diets as one of the defining characteristics of Blue Zones. And while this new study puts into question the credibility of “Blue Zone Supercentenarians,” there is still credence for American centenarians who have more reliable records and did not modify their childhood eating habits after official health advice began pushing for low-fat plant-based foods in the late 1960s. This might explain why advocates of low-carbohydrate diets like the increasingly popular ketogenic diet are particularly excited about this paper, even though it has not yet been peer-reviewed.