Talk:List of unvalidated deceased supercentenarians/@comment-31321778-20170801001205/@comment-258494-20170808014221

Second...I'm not sure that you realize that the Gerontology Wiki IS keeping track of 115+ unvalidated cases...we are just putting them in the longevity claims category. If you really want that data, you can find it. Note: it's nowhere near complete because there are so many questionable claims to 115+ that few editors here have made much effort to fill out those lists.

Let's not forget that, initially, demographic skeptics believed that any claim to 110+ should be looked upon as doubtful, without proper validation.

However, with the vastly increasing number of persons over the last 20 years reaching their 110th birthday, it made sense to relax this level a skepticism a bit. Even so, let's not also forget about another 2% number...just 2% of those turning 110 will make it to their 115th birthday. And while the number of living, validatable supercentenarians at the moment exceeds 150 (probably closer to 200), the number of validated 115+ year-olds is currently...5. And there's no one on the horizon 115+ that looks like their case will be validated any time soon. Indeed, the oldest "validatable" case is probably a woman in Spain said to be currently 113 at the moment.

In short, putting "validatable" cases in the 110-114 category with the validated cases is mainly to help the validation process: to identify candidates for potential future validation. It also helps round out one's view of the numbers of potentially "validatable" supercentenarians. We can see that the numbers of cases are far greater than the numbers of validated cases. And there's a reason for that. The enticement of being in some WOP list is not enough for everyone, and many that might be enticed by such a listing aren't aware of it, either. In some cases, people are aware but can't find the documents, and in others the documents might no longer exist, or might never have existed in the first place. If science can develop an accurate way to measure age without having to check vital statistics registers, it could revolutionize the validation process one day. But that day is far off.Ryoung122 (talk) 01:42, August 8, 2017 (UTC)