Talk:List of unvalidated deceased supercentenarians/@comment-31321778-20170801001205/@comment-258494-20170808013353

Greetings,

With due respect, actually, the 2% number refers to the odds of US SSDI 115+ cases in the study to be validated. However, the real proportion of 115+ cases worldwide that will be validated is MUCH LOWER. One needs to understand that the US data is MUCH BETTER THAN THE WORLD AVERAGE. Taking into consideration the much lower levels of recordkeeping on a worldwide basis 110+ years ago and the observation that has been shown to be correct...that everywhere systematic birth registration doesn't exist (many parts of Africa, Arabia, etc 110+ years ago) or is only for the upper-class elite (such as in India, Russia, and China 110 years ago), the odds are that 0% of the claims 115+ will be validated. Indeed, if we had world-scale data to average, I would estimate just 0.1% of claims to 115+ would be validated. At some point, chasing after the needle in the haystack is not worth it from a scientific validation perspective (and, also, if we do so, we are also distorting the data by picking the best cases rather than analyzing the entire data sample). One thing we can say is that we also don't need "every" case; we just need a scientifically valid case sample that is sufficiently large that we can draw conclusions from it and apply it on a general basis to humans as a species.01:33, August 8, 2017 (UTC)