The Week in Meep: Award for Pension Fraud (Detecting It), SUMO!, and Surreal Art

Let's lighten it up

Stu starts radiation therapy next week, but this last week hasn’t been great. At least I didn’t have to drive to Manhattan. Stu got more blood, so that was his 8th transfusion. He still has fluid around his left lung. We’re waiting to see about his pulmonary embolism.

So… let me get to fun stuff! Let’s lighten the mood!

Ig Nobel Prizes: An Award for Detecting Fraud…

The Ig Nobel Prizes are awarded each year at MIT, with the motto “Research that makes people LAUGH… then THINK”.

In the list of 2024 winners, this caught my eye:

DEMOGRAPHY PRIZE [AUSTRALIA, UK]

Saul Justin Newman, for detective work to discover that many of the people famous for having the longest lives lived in places that had lousy birth-and-death recordkeeping.
REFERENCE: “Supercentenarians and the Oldest-Old Are Concentrated into Regions with No Birth Certificates and Short Lifespans,” Saul Justin Newman, BioRxiv, 704080, 2019. <doi.org/10.1101/704080>
REFERENCE: “Supercentenarian and Remarkable Age Records Exhibit Patterns Indicative of Clerical Errors and Pension Fraud,” Saul Justin Newman, BioRxiv, 2024. <doi.org/10.1101/704080>
WHO CAME TO THE CEREMONY: Saul Justin Newman

This may sound familiar to you: [yes, it was based on Saul Justin Newman’s research]

January 2024:

But it came up way before 2024: [also Saul Justin Newman]

August 2019: Mortality with Meep: How to Get Lots of Supercentenarians? Pension fraud!  

Abstract

The observation of individuals attaining remarkable ages, and their concentration into geographic sub-regions or ‘blue zones’, has generated considerable scientific interest. Proposed drivers of remarkable longevity include high vegetable intake, strong social connections, and genetic markers. Here, we reveal new predictors of remarkable longevity and ‘supercentenarian’ status. In the United States, supercentenarian status is predicted by the absence of vital registration. The state-specific introduction of birth certificates is associated with a 69-82% fall in the number of supercentenarian records. In Italy, which has more uniform vital registration, remarkable longevity is instead predicted by low per capita incomes and a short life expectancy. Finally, the designated ‘blue zones’ of Sardinia, Okinawa, and Ikaria corresponded to regions with low incomes, low literacy, high crime rate and short life expectancy relative to their national average. As such, relative poverty and short lifespan constitute unexpected predictors of centenarian and supercentenarian status, and support a primary role of fraud and error in generating remarkable human age records.

Here is the award ceremony (and there’s a lot of awards — Saul Justin Newman’s award at is 1:38:30 — I can’t cue it at the timestamp, sorry.)

The awardee on getting the prize:‘The data on extreme human ageing is rotten from the inside out’ – Ig Nobel winner Saul Justin Newman

How did you find out about your award?

I picked up the phone after slogging through traffic and rain to a bloke from Cambridge in the UK. He told me about this prize and the first thing I thought of was the lady who collected snot off of whales and the levitating frog. I said, “absolutely I want to be in this club”.

….

But your work is actually incredibly serious?

I started getting interested in this topic when I debunked a couple of papers in Nature and Science about extreme ageing in the 2010s. In general, the claims about how long people are living mostly don’t stack up. I’ve tracked down 80% of the people aged over 110 in the world (the other 20% are from countries you can’t meaningfully analyse). Of those, almost none have a birth certificate. In the US there are over 500 of these people; seven have a birth certificate. Even worse, only about 10% have a death certificate.

The epitome of this is blue zones, which are regions where people supposedly reach age 100 at a remarkable rate. For almost 20 years, they have been marketed to the public. They’re the subject of tons of scientific work, a popular Netflix documentary, tons of cookbooks about things like the Mediterranean diet, and so on.

Okinawa in Japan is one of these zones. There was a Japanese government review in 2010, which found that 82% of the people aged over 100 in Japan turned out to be dead. The secret to living to 110 was, don’t register your death.

The Japanese government has run one of the largest nutritional surveys in the world, dating back to 1975. From then until now, Okinawa has had the worst health in Japan. They’ve eaten the least vegetables; they’ve been extremely heavy drinkers.

I will have more to say about his work, as he has another paper out recently: The global pattern of centenarians highlights deep problems in demography

Some of the other winners I enjoyed: [emphasis added]

PROBABILITY PRIZE [THE NETHERLANDS, SWITZERLAND, BELGIUM, FRANCE, GERMANY, HUNGARY, CZECH REPUBLIC]
František Bartoš, Eric-Jan Wagenmakers, Alexandra Sarafoglou, Henrik Godmann, and many colleagues, for showing, both in theory and by 350,757 experiments, that when you flip a coin, it tends to land on the same side as it started.
REFERENCE: “Fair Coins Tend to Land on the Same Side They Started: Evidence from 350,757 Flips,” František Bartoš, et al., arXiv 2310.04153, 2023. <doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2310.04153>
WHO CAME TO THE CEREMONY: Frantisek Bartos, and Eric-Jan Wagenmakers

Seems useful.

BIOLOGY PRIZE [USA]
Fordyce Ely and William E. Petersen, for exploding a paper bag next to a cat that’s standing on the back of a cow, to explore how and when cows spew their milk.
REFERENCE: “Factors Involved in the Ejection of Milk,” Fordyce Ely and W.E. Petersen, Journal of Dairy Science, vol. 3, 1941, pp. 211- 23. <doi.org/10.1093/ansci/1939.1.80>
WHO CAME TO THE CEREMONY: Fordyce Ely’s daughter Jane Ely Wells and grandson Matt Wells

What is it with terrorizing cats?

SUMO SUMO SUMO!

It’s Wacky Aki right now, the September Grand Sumo Tournament in Tokyo, and it is a great time. There have been some outstanding matches.

But first, one of the things that makes me love sumo: its lack of weight classes leads to match-ups like this: [auto-translated]

Nikkan Sports: 118kg Tokyo University graduate vs 252kg active heaviest wrestler "Just as expected" Suyama wins "A new sensation. Scary"

<Autumn Grand Sumo Tournament> ◇Day 8◇15th◇Ryogoku Kokugikan, Tokyo

Suyama (26, Kise), the first man in the history of sumo to graduate from Tokyo University and ranked 10th in the west sandanme division, defeated the heaviest active wrestler. He defeated Dewanojo (30, Dewanoumi), who is 190.5 cm tall and weighs 252 kg, with a footwork victory, bringing his record to 3 wins and 1 loss.

The highest-ranked wrestler, 182 cm tall and 115.5 kg, faced off against the heaviest wrestler. At the start of the match, he circled around from the left and tried to grab his arm, but "it didn't work." From there, he thrust with both hands, thrusting alternately from right to left... and after stopping his opponent's feet, he finally lifted his left foot with both hands and rolled him over.

His winning move is called ashi-tori, or the leg pick.

Smaller wrestlers are more likely to try it (being closer to the ground).

Down goes Dewanojo!

252 kg = over 555 pounds

155.5 kg = 255 pounds

There’s a 300-pound difference there.

The heaviest man often doesn’t win. Congrats, Suwaya!

At the top level, the top weights are more like 350 pounds for the major wrestlers. They’re more noticeably muscular.

Here is one of our faves, Wakatakakage: (5’11”, 300 pounds):

Meme by ExtensionEar1901 from SumoMemes subreddit

An old video of me talking about sumo: [and my son & I pronounce “Wakatakakage at the 6:45 mark]

Art!

I love Rene Magritte.

I follow lots of art bots on X/twitter.

Of course, one of Magritte’s more notorious pieces is this:

The Treachery of Images, 1929

And he did other versions of this:

I think somebody missed the point.

I have a thread of jokes based on this piece at the actuarial discussion forum, goActuary: This is not a pipe thread.

A few of my favorites:

Enjoy!