Talk:List of oldest living men in the United States/@comment-44851562-20200112234812/@comment-44851562-20200124175015

Hi YouthfulC,

I cannot help but feel disappointed that you firmly believe the "burden of proof" is on me. This I believe to be quite a lazy response, as the burden is really on anybody who wants to see the most all-encompassing dataset. If one is fascinated, as I am, with longevity claims, then surely they would agree it is upto everyone involved in documenting these instances of extreme longevity. As mentioned I am very much here to progress in broadening my knowledge on these cases and am by no means familiar with any formal protocol accessible to the general public for influencing additions to these lists. Therefore, I took this approach which, albeit quite informal, was still successful. This is not to undermine anyone's knowledge, but make factual observations about the credibility of what has been described as c"crediblle" as part of the protocol for making additions. It is also about improving the representative value of this list as a dataset, which we have actually managed to improve. As you can imagine, extreme longevity is, by in large, a rarity and therefore making accurate additions is improving the significance of this list in understand trends among those who have achieved extreme longevity.

At the very least, when I pose a plausible instance, it is open for debate. However, I do expect others with the same vested interest in longevity claims to take responsibility for researching this is the most credible way, as opposed for waiting for it to be confirmed. Without looking into it then we are even just assuming the addition is credible without the background knowledge of that individual. I'm surprised to see how much discourse has been caused by this, when you would imagine people would find new and accurate additions as a positive thing.

Sorry if my method was opposed to th formal protocol you all seem to be so heavily indoctrinated to, but the simple fact is, it was effective and worked. And that should be a triumph for anyone who wants to improve the representative value of the list.

Regards, Aaron McKenna, 17:50, January 24, 2020 (GMT)