#4 Questioning the Mortality Plateau with Biologist Saul Newman

As adults, our odds of dying doubles about every eight years. However, a high-profile paper published in Science this summer seems to tell a different story; past age 80 those increasing odds slow down and almost completely level off past 100, In this episode, we speak with Saul Newman, a biologist at the Australia National University in Canberra, who says this "mortality plateau" probably isn't real and can be chalked up to both sloppy science and problems with how the data was collected.

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Links:

Human mortality 'plateau' may be statistical error, not hint of immortality
https://eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-12/p-hm121118.php

Errors as a primary cause of late-life mortality deceleration and plateaus
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.2006776

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