Are the world’s oldest people really that old?

Madeleine Finlay speaks to Dr Saul Newman, an interdisciplinary
researcher at University College London and the University of
Oxford, who has just won an Ig Nobel prize – given to scientific
research that ‘first makes people laugh, and then makes them think’
– for his work showing that many claims of people living
extraordinarily long lives come from places with short lifespans,
no birth certificates, and where clerical errors and pension fraud
abound. He tells Madeleine what happened when he went looking for
the world’s centenarians, and how his work has been received by the
longevity research community. Help support our independent
journalism at theguardian.com/sciencepod