When interviewing people who have reached 100 or even 110 years old, it is common to ask some variation of the question, “What did you do to live this long?”
Inevitably, interesting and unexpected answers will be highlighted. fish and chips Every Friday.After a drink strong drink every day. bacon For breakfast every morning. wine and chocolate.
Although a popular news article, this is a relatively pointless question and does not help us understand why certain people live so long. Let us explain why through beautiful buildings, fighter pilots, and statistics.
During World War II, Allied statisticians applied the technique to minimize the number of bombers shot down by enemy artillery. By studying damage patterns on bombers returning from combat, it is possible to map the most frequently damaged parts of the aircraft and add expensive, heavy armor to these parts.
Simple enough, right? Then statistician Abraham Wald appears and insists on accurate data. opposite point. The planes they study are all those that returned from combat with extensive damage, but what happens to the planes that don’t return?
Wald argues that armor should be added to all intact locations on all returning planes. This is because aircraft that hit these intact locations were shot down and never returned for investigation.
survivor bias
This phenomenon is known as survivorship bias. That is, the cognitive and statistical biases introduced by counting only what should be counted and ignoring what does not “survive.”
You can also view these examples as absurd. Imagine her group of 100 people, all of whom have smoked their entire lives. As a group, smokers die earlier from cancer, lung disease, and heart disease, but one or two people may defy the odds and live to be 100 years old. Now imagine that an intrepid journalist interviewed people lucky enough to celebrate their 100th birthday, asking them the classic question: “What makes you grow old so successfully?”
“I smoke a pack a day,” says the newly minted centenarian.
It may seem obvious, but survivor bias exists everywhere in society. We can all think of one famous actor or entrepreneur who succeeded despite adversity, worked hard, believed in themselves, and one day achieved success. But we never read or hear about the countless examples of people who tried, tried their best, and did not completely succeed.
That’s not a good story for the media. However, this creates a bias and we mostly hear about the successes and never the failures. This bias often affects our perceptions of architecture (most of the great buildings of a given era “survive”) or finances (for example, those who succeed in risky investments and those who fail do not sell books or self-help schemes). (listen) applies. ) and career plans (“If you work hard and drop out of college now, you can become a successful athlete like me,” say successful people).
Designer 491/Alamy Stock Photo
I work with a variety of older adults, some of whom are often extreme outliers who have lived very long lives. We are currently studying older adults aged 65 and older who maintain an unusually high level of physical activity and excellent health well into old age.
They are incredible examples of older people, and many of them are faster, healthier, and stronger than me in many measurements done in the lab, even though they are almost twice my age. .
We know that their lifelong exercise is associated with unusually good health into old age, but we still can’t directly say that one causes the other. Very active people may be protected from chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. However, because these people did not suffer from cancer, diabetes, or heart disease early in life, they may still be active at older ages.
Conversely, for these people, an unknown third factor, which we have not yet identified, may be keeping them healthy and separately exercising.
To be clear, there are things that scientists like me, speaking in carefully cautioned scientific terms, could probably help you live longer. Being very physically active, not eating too much, and not smoking are all on that list, plus having a generally positive outlook on life, and of course, This includes choosing suitable parents and grandparents.
Correlation does not equal causation. This point is hammered home mercilessly by science students. This is how our brain works, we recognize a pattern between her two variables and assume that they are somehow linked. But like survivorship bias, we don’t look at all the data, so we often find patterns that don’t exist.
