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Comment on “The real facts supporting Jeanne Calment as the oldest ever human”
Philip Gibbs PhD, philegibbs@gmail.com
Nikolay Zak PhD, kolyazak@gmail.com
Main text: 3464 words, 1 figure.
Abstract
In 1997 Jeanne Calment died at a claimed age of 122 years and 164 days. The authenticity of
her age was validated by Michel Allard and Jean-Marie Robine who published popular books
about her case. In 2018 Nikolay Zak presented evidence that Jeanne Calment’s daughter
Yvonne had assumed her mother’s identity. In 2019 the original validators and their
colleagues defended their work and tried to refute the points of evidence made by Zak. In this
comment we examine their arguments and find that they do not hold up. We provide new
damning evidence in favour of the identity switch hypothesis.
Keywords: Jeanne Calment, mortality, longevity, supercentenarian, validation
Topics: demography, gerontology, mathematics, genealogy
[Copies of the reviewer’s comments and our responses are included as an addendum]
Introduction
In 1997 Jeanne Calment of France died at the claimed all-time record age of 122 years and
164 days. She was more than seven years older than the incumbent record holder, but this
was not clear at the time due to false longevity claims recognised by Guiness World Records
that have since been debunked (Izumi, White, Beard, Hannah etc.). Her authenticity was
validated by Jean-Marie Robine and Michel Allard (1). In 2018 Nikolay Zak undertook a
review of Calment’s validation on the suggestion of gerontologist Valery Novoselov, and
published a paper containing evidence that Jeanne Calment’s identity had been assumed by
her daughter Yvonne whose death was recorded in 1934 (2). In 2019 her validators and two
additional authors refuted Zak’s claims in a paper titled “The real facts supporting Jeanne
Calment as the oldest ever human” (3). In this work we will counter all the points made in
that paper and provide new conclusive evidence that Jeanne Calment was indeed inauthentic.
The “Real Facts” paper attacks only an interview with Valery Novoselov (4) and the first
paper published by Zak in preprint and final peer-reviewed form. They ignored further
evidence in a preprint of the paper by Zak and Gibbs (5) already available at the time.
Recently Zak and Gibbs have published a 3-volume book (6) and a summary paper (7) with
stronger evidence on the inauthenticity of Jeanne Calment’s claimed age.
The question of the authenticity of the longevity of Jeanne Calment is important to science
and society. Her claimed age would be a statistically significant outlier if securely validated.
Her case is cited thousands of times in the demographic and gerontological literature and has
been used to justify the hypothesis of a mortality plateau at old age. This has influenced
thinking on whether or not life expectancy will reach a maximum limit.
Methods
The hypothetical identity switch between mother and daughter is not visible in the official
record because Yvonne would have lied about her identity with the complicity of her husband
and father. We therefore turned to other evidence including family photographs, newspaper
reports, recorded testimony, and archived documents to build a detailed timeline of events.
Our searches have gone well beyond those of the original validators and her other supporters
who sought to confirm her authenticity.
Results
We found that the evidence builds a consistent story telling how and why Yvonne Calment
switched identities with her mother before Jeanne died of tuberculosis in 1934. In particular
we were able to access archives to find new signatures of Jeanne Calment on financial
documents from 1931, 1932 and 1933. They show a clear, sudden, and permanent change that
can only be explained by an identity switch. We also received testimony from the son of the
director of the Belvedere sanatorium in Leysin indicating that it was Jeanne who was treated
there rather than Yvonne. In addition, recorded testimony of Mme Calment released by
INSERM in 2022 examined in the light of other records strongly supports the identity switch
hypothesis.
Throughout the rest of this comment, we will use the same subsection titles as in the “Real
Facts” paper in order to address the points made by the authors in those sections.
Familial Reconstitution Method
The validators for Jeanne Calment’s longevity commissioned a genealogist to construct her
ancestral family tree. This is a relatively straight forward task given the vital records available
in France. More detail has since been added to her ancestry and family descendants by us and
others using modern tools and databases. The authors say that “Zak argues that a case such as
JC should demonstrate familial evidence of exceptional longevity”. In fact, Zak refers to the
validators’ version of this claim and their assertion that it holds in the case of Jeanne Calment
(1) which is repeated in the “Real Facts” paper. Zak demonstrated that the familial longevity
would not be exceptional for families of the Calment’s social standing.
Multiple Documents from Throughout the Person’s Life That Are Consistent in Their
Documentation of the Claimant’s Age
The authors repeat that multiple official documents consistently cover the life of Jeanne
Calment from birth to death including numerous census reports. Zak has noted that according
to the switch hypothesis Jeanne Calment and her immediate family would have lied on all
official records after the switch, making it invisible to the records. Officials normally accept
the declaration of family members for the purposes of vital records and census returns
provided they are consistent with earlier records. No official checks are made that would
uncover such fraud other than the identification of the body for the death record of Yvonne.
We believe it was really Jeanne that died in 1934 after Yvonne had assumed her identity. It is
understood that the cause of death was tuberculosis which by its nature would make
identification difficult. We believe that Yvonne had been posing as Jeanne for at least a year
prior to her death. Taking these considerations into account, the availability of multiple
documents does not rule out the switch hypothesis as claimed by the validators.
Claimant Interviews
From 1992 to 1995 the validation team interviewed Mme Calment at her care home in Arles.
Many of the interviews were recorded on audio tape. Edited transcripts were published in
book form in French (8) and English (9). In 2019 following the allegations of Nikolay Zak,
INSERM committed to publishing the original audio of these interviews. Three years later
they released most of the recordings in digital form online (10). According to the authors of
the “Real Facts” paper, “despite few small inconsistencies not once did these conversations
produce a suspicion of fraud and especially not a possibility of an identity switch between
mother and daughter.” After listening to the original recordings, we disagree with this
assessment. Mme Calment made many apparent mistakes that would be correct if she were
Yvonne rather than Jeanne. For example, she sometimes referred to Fernand Calment as her
father rather than her husband, before correcting herself or being corrected by the interviewer.
There were also significant gaps in her childhood memories. For example, she was never able
to name or describe a childhood friend, despite repeated requests from her interviewers. It
would be possible to chalk up any of these mistakes to confusion or forgetfulness, but the
number and consistency of her errors should have raised suspicions that she was Yvonne
rather than Jeanne. Apart from a confusion in which she initially said that Mistral was a
friend of her father's, none of these obvious errors were recorded in the books.
In the “Real Facts” paper the authors provide a numbered list of 16 facts that Mme Calment
revealed about her family life in the interviews. They imply that these prove her true identity
because Yvonne would not have known that. In fact, all the facts listed are things that anyone
in the family would or could have known. The authors claim that Yvonne would not have
known her mother’s godparents (items (v) and (vi) in their list). This is unreasonable given
the prominent role godparents play in the catholic family system. However, Mme Calment
stated incorrectly the address and occupation of Jeanne Calment’s godfather Louis Paget,
substituting in the corresponding details of a similarly named neighbour Louis Laget. The
validators did not seem to notice this.
Item (xvi) on the list is Mme Calment’s recollection of their servant Marthe Fousson. The
authors fail to declare that this servant was only mentioned in the context of having walked
her to school. This would not have been possible for Jeanne since Fousson was younger, but
she could have walked Yvonne to school (7). This was noted as evidence of the switch by Zak
in his paper but is selectively ignored by the authors of the “Real Facts” paper.
The Conspiracy Theory of an Identity Switch
Throughout the “Real Facts” paper the authors repeatedly refer to the identity switch
hypothesis as a “conspiracy theory” in order to discredit it. In a literal sense this is correct
because the switch hypothesis is a theory about a family conspiracy. However, according to
Wikipedia “A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that asserts the
existence of a conspiracy by powerful and sinister groups, often political in motivation, when
other explanations are more probable.” Since the Calment family was not a powerful or
sinister group the description is not appropriate here.
In this section of the “Real Facts” paper, the authors claim that “it appears that Zak concludes
that it was mathematically impossible for a person to reach the age of 122 years”. Zak only
looked at probabilities and never spoke of such impossibilities. He concluded that there was a
small chance that Jeanne Calment had reached the age she claimed. The authors criticise Zak
for assuming a plateau model for the force of mortality in his calculation and for not
considering other models. The plateau model is the most conservative option and any other
plausible models would only decrease her prior probability for reaching her claimed age, so
this criticism is unwarranted. This year a study examining updated French statistics in the
IDL database concluded that a plateau was not a good model above 105 years of age (11). A
Gompertz model was described as a better fit. If this is correct, then the probability for Jeanne
Calment’s record longevity achievement would be much lower. Jean-Marie Robine was an
author of that study but there was no comment on the implications for the plausibility of
Jeanne Calment’s age.
The authors assert that “To support the hypothesis of an identity switch one must have a
motive justifying such a fraud, and then show that such a substitution was practically
possible.” Strictly speaking this is not true. If evidence strongly supports the switch
hypothesis, then it is not necessary to know what the motive was. Originally Zak proposed a
financial motive for the switch based on inheritance tax or the possibility of a beneficial
annuity. Subsequent research has found that such a financial motive was unlikely to have
been sufficiently strong, but other motives have been identified. The authors claim that “Zak
is negligent in not noting that Nicolas Calment (NC) had given all his property to his children
on March 15, 1926, in exchange for an annual life annuity of 5,000 francs that his children
had to pay him until his death.” This was one of many circumstances not known when Zak
published his original paper, but it does not change the fact that there would still have been
inheritance tax to pay on the property previously belonging to her father when Jeanne died.
This observation therefore fails to refute the motive. There are many relevant facts that the
authors of the “Real Facts” paper have neglected to address but unlike them we do not resort
to such prejudicial language to make our points.
It has also come to light that Jeanne Calment’s signature changed a year before the switch
(see below). It is likely that Jeanne’s tuberculosis was kept secret. Yvonne’s husband Joseph
Billot would have had to claim that his wife was ill at that time in order to extend his leave
from the army. These provided a further motive for the switch while Jeanne was ill and made
it too difficult to reverse the switch when Jeanne died. For the last thirty years of her life
Mme Calment benefited from an age-based en viager deal with a notary that provided a
further motive to never admit to her fraud in her later years.
The authors of the “Real Facts” paper assert that the Calment family was too well known for
the switch to be plausible. We found that from 1931 until the funeral in 1934 and beyond
Jeanne and Yvonne were not recorded in public. As asserted by Novoselov and Zak they
could have been staying at an out-of-town property due to the illness. The authors refute this
bizarrely by saying that Zak himself negates this notion in his preprint by stating that “Jeanne
Louise Calment had been alive for 12 years and 164 days after her 110th anniversary and was
under close (and with growing age) scrutiny from the general public and scientific
community”. It is not obvious why the authors think that her notoriety more than 50 years
later is relevant.
The authors go on to claim that the switch would require the “complicity of dozens of
people”. This is based on the assumption that everyone who was mentioned on the death
notice and even anyone present at her funeral would have witnessed the switch. There is
simply no reason to think that this is correct. In our estimation only a handful of close
relatives and friends would have been complicit.
They go on to claim that “such a substitution would have led to an incestuous family
configuration” because “Fernand and Yvonne would have had to act as if they were married”.
It is true that they would have to keep up such a pretence in public, but in private Yvonne
would have been with her true husband Joseph. Indeed, it is more problematical if there were
no switch that after the war during which Fernand died, Mme Calment and Joseph lived
together in the same apartment and were pictured in a close relationship.
The authors try to give the impression that Zak's work was full of errors, which they don't
mention for lack of space. They say that some of these were covered by others, referring, for
example, to Le Bourg's “refutation” of the eye colour argument raised by Zak. However, the
published tapes confirmed the validity of this argument: Madame Calment was recorded
saying that her eyes had always been “light grey, as they are today”, which contradicts the
“black”, i.e., dark, eye colour stated in Jeanne's passport (7).
In 1931 Yvonne was photographed in a location that we and others geolocated to the terrace
of the Belvedere sanatorium in Leysin, Switzerland. The authors say that she was “being
possibly treated for tuberculosis”. We believe that Yvonne was ill earlier in 1928 when her
husband took army leave to care for her, but in recorded testimony Mme Calment said that
she was treated in the Savoie region where we know there was a tuberculosis sanatorium on
the Plateau D’Assy. In 1929 Yvonne was photographed at the wedding of her brother in-law
looking perfectly healthy. The photo taken in 1931 at the Belvedere also shows no sign of her
illness. Another photograph of Jeanne and Yvonne together appears to have been taken on the
same terrace at about the same time, and in that picture, it appears that Jeanne is the one who
was ill. This was confirmed for us by the son of Dr. Maurice Gilbert, the director of the
Belvedere at that time. Luc-Regis Gilbert reported in an interview that his father had
remarked on Jeanne Calment in the 1970s with surprise that she was still alive because she
was treated by him at the Belvedere (12). The authors are therefore wrong that Yvonne was ill
in 1931 and the real facts are that Jeanne was ill at that time.
It remains to establish whether
(A) Jeanne recovered to live for another 66 years while Yvonne relapsed and died in 1934
or
(B) Jeanne’s health worsened until she died in 1934 with Yvonne assuming her identity.
To determine which option is correct we obtained new copies of Jeanne Calment’s signature
from 1931, 1932 and 1933 in addition to other previously known examples (figure 1). These
show a distinct change in her autograph between February 1932 and January 1933. Jeanne
Calment’s signature had been stable for at least 8 years prior to 1933. We note that the
longstanding notary to the Calment family, M. Arnaud retired in June 1932 and was replaced
by a new notary M. David who arrived in Arles from Grenoble. This provided an opportunity
for the identity switch to take place at that time for the purpose of signing legal documents
while keeping Jeanne's illness secret.
Figure 1 Samples of Jeanne Calment signatures before and aer the identy switch
We observe that the change of signature was too sudden to be explained as evolution. An
identity switch is the only plausible explanation. While other evidence for the identity switch
is numerous it might be considered circumstantial. The change of signature is however
concrete evidence. Only a DNA test for Mme Calment could provide stronger evidence. In its
absence, the evidence we have provided now proves the switch hypothesis beyond any
reasonable doubt.
Cohort Reconstruction and Modeling
In this section of the “Real Facts” paper the authors go on to model the probability of Mme
Calment’s longevity. Again, they assert that Zak claimed that her longevity is impossible
which he never did. The authors admit that Jeanne Calment was an outlier, a widely accepted
assessment. We have never claimed that this is conclusive proof of her inauthenticity. Rather,
it is a motivation to re-examine the evidence that we find independently confirming the fraud.
It is also possible to combine such modelling with estimated prior probabilities for other
items of evidence in a Bayesian analysis. When we did this in 2019, we calculated
conservatively that it would require 3 million centenarians before a survivor to the age of
Jeanne Calment was expected. The authors of the “Real Facts” paper calculate that it would
require a figure of 10 million centenarians. This higher estimate therefore increases the
likelihood of the switch hypothesis by a factor of three. As statistics on supercentenarian
counts improve and mortality rates further exceed the plateau levels of earlier models, we
expect this figure to increase further.
The authors estimate “somewhere between 8 and 10 million centenarians since at least the
1700s”. We reckon from the Human Mortality Database that only about 800,000 people had
lived to be centenarians in countries and cohorts where their age could have been validated
before Jeanne Calment reached 100. Their assessment is therefore too high by a factor of at
least ten.
Note however that the signature evidence takes us beyond the need for the Bayesian method
as it provides direct and concrete proof of an identity switch. Mortality calculations are
therefore no longer necessary.
Conclusion
The authors of the “Real Facts” said that Zak never mentioned the existence of well-validated
extreme cases of longevity. In fact, it was the detailed study of all these cases which led Zak
to question the age of Jeanne Calment. They advise that we should look at the longevity of
other supercentenarians such as Sarah Knauss who was already mentioned in Zak’s paper. We
have since done so further and observed a stark contrast with Jeanne Calment. Despite our
initial scepticism due to the previous absence of age documentation before the age of 19, the
evidence we found in the case of Sarah Knauss continued to confirm her longevity. We
discovered a copy of an important 1890 census record, which gave Sarah Clark (later Knauss)
as 10 years old. We also uncovered some evidence in the register that the church had checked
her baptismal record, which is still missing (13). This is in contrast to the case of Jeanne
Calment, where every new piece of evidence we find tends to confirm her lack of
authenticity.
It is important to consider objectively whether or not Mme Calment was authentic. We have
done so and have found concrete and consistent evidence that Yvonne Calment assumed the
identity of her mother and that her claimed longevity is therefore not authentic.
Conflict of interest (for the authors of the “Real Facts” paper)
No conflicts of interest have been declared by the authors of the “Real Facts” paper. It should
be noted that at least two of the authors were directly involved in the project to validate
Calment's longevity, financed by the INSERM and by the IPSEN Foundation. At the time,
this gave them great prestige and helped some of them in their scientific careers.
The authors concluded by calling for a retraction of Zak's paper from the journal
Rejuvenation Research. The “Real Facts” paper is still widely accepted as the definitive proof
that Jeanne Calment's age was authentic. We are not calling for the retraction of this paper,
but we are urging the scientific community to make an informed judgement on this issue.
Conflict of Interest (for the authors of this comment)
We have undertaken this study as unfunded scientists with an interest in establishing the truth.
We have no conflicts of interest.
Acknowledgments
We would like to acknowledge numerous historical discoveries of Patricia Laurette Hussenet
Couturier and to thank Christian Grant, Ilya Krouglikov, Marguerite Raspail, Galina Shagieva
and Fedor Zak for their help and support.
The authors Philip Gibbs and Nikolay Zak have contributed equally to the research and
writing of this article.
References
1. Robine JM, Allard M. The oldest human. Science. 1998;279:1834–1835.
doi:10.1126/science.279.5358.1831h
2. Zak N. Evidence that Jeanne Calment died in 1934 - not 1997. Rejuvenation
Research. 2019;22:3–12. doi:10.1089/rej.2018.2167
3. Robine JM, Allard M, Herrmann FR, Jeune B. The Real Facts Supporting Jeanne
Calment as the Oldest Ever Human. The Journals of Gerontology: Series A, Volume
74, Issue Supplement_1, December 2019, Pages S13–S20,
https://doi.org/10.1093/gerona/glz198
4. Milova E Valery Novoselov: Investigating Jeanne Calment’s Longevity Record. Life
Extension Advocacy Foundation. https://www.leafscience.org/valery-novoselov-
investigating-jeanne-calments-longevity-record/.
5. Zak N, Gibbs P. A Bayesian Assessment of the Longevity of Jeanne Calment,
Rejuvenation Research. 2020; https://doi.org/10.1089/rej.2019.2227
6. Zak N, Gibbs P. Jeanne Calment, the Secret of Longevity Unravelled, Amazon, 2022.
7. Zak N, Gibbs P. On the authenticity of “the oldest human” Jeanne Calment, SocArXiv
2023-08-09, 10.31235/osf.io/jgmsc; https://ideas.repec.org/p/osf/socarx/jgmsc.html
8. Allard M, Lèbre V, Robine JM. Les 120 Ans De Jeanne Calment. Paris, France: Le
Cherche-Midi Editeur; 1994.
9. Allard M, Lèbre V, Robine JM. Jeanne Calment: From Van Gogh’s Time to Ours, 122
Extraordinary Years. New York, NY: WH Freeman and Company; 1998.
10. Allard M, Lèbre V, Robine JM, Calment J. Fonds audio Jeanne Calment, 2022,
https://www.ipubli.inserm.fr/handle/10608/12340
11. Dang LHK, Camarda CG, Ouellette N, Meslé F, Robine JM, Vallin J. The question of
the human mortality plateau: Contrasting insights by longevity pioneers.
Demographic Research, Vol. 48 (JANUARY - JUNE 2023), pp. 321-338
Addendum
In October 2023 this comment paper was submied to The Journals of Gerontology: Series A –
Medical Sciences, a journal of the Gerontological Society of America published by Oxford Academic.
This was the same journal that had published the paper on which it comments. It was rejected for
publicaon aer peer-review with reviewer comments that we consider to be incorrect and biased.
Here we include copies of our covering leer, the rejecon leer with reviewer comments, our
responses to the reviewer comments, and the editor-in-chiefs nal decision noce.
Covering Leer (5 Oct 2023)
Dear editors of The Journals of Gerontology: series A
In September 2019 you published the paper “The Real Facts Supporng Jeanne Calment as the
Oldest Ever Human” This paper was highly crical of the work of one of us (Nikolay Zak). describing
him as negligent for ignoring one historic document, calling his work “unfounded accusaons” and
demanding the retracon of his work. The paper was accompanied by a press release that was taken
up by mulple news media worldwide. Naturally they assumed on the reputaon of your journal that
the work was properly peer-reviewed and therefore reliable.
In this comment we have addressed the points made by the authors of the “Real Facts” paper and
shown that its arguments are of very low quality. There are several glaring errors that should have
been picked up in peer-review. As redress we consider it only fair that you should publish this
comment that corrects the science.
We are aware that the word count exceeds the usual number allowed for a comment. However, the
paper on which we comment also exceeded its usual word count and we have kept the comment as
short as possible.
We ask only for equitable publicaon as a right to reply and as a maer of publicaon ethics. We
note that the “Real Facts” paper was published as open access and we would consider it reasonable
if our comment is also published as open access. We are unfunded independent researchers whose
move is only to correct the scienc record for the benet of society.
Sincerely
Philip Gibbs
Nikolay Zak.
Rejecon Leer with reviewer’s comments (10 Nov 2023)
Dear Dr. Gibbs,
Thank you for subming your manuscript JGMS-2023-RES-0765 entled "Comment on “The real
facts supporng Jeanne Calment as the oldest ever human”" to the Journal of Gerontology: Medical
Sciences.
I regret to inform you that based on the reviewer comments found below, we will not be able to
publish the above menoned manuscript in the Journal. Currently, JGMS only has room to publish
about 15% of submied manuscripts. Thus, editors must make dicult priority decisions based on
interest to our readers, scienc rigor and potenal impact on the eld.
Thank you for considering the Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences for the publicaon of your
research. I hope the outcome of this specic submission will not discourage you from the
submission of future manuscripts.
Yours sincerely,
Lewis Lipsitz, MD
Editor in Chief
Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences
Reviewer 1 Comments to the Author
Abstract.
Page 2 Lines 6-11. “The authencity of her age was validated by Michel Allard and Jean-Marie Robine
who published popular books” Authors leave out fact that Robine and Allard authored an arcle in
Science. Authors’ indicaon that Robine and Allard published in popular books infers there was no
peer review and is misleading. I see they do menon the reference in the introducon and so this
should be in the abstract [Robine JM, Allard M. The oldest human. Science. 1998 Mar
20;279(5358):1834-5. doi: 10.1126/science.279.5358.1831h. PMID: 9537897]
Introducon
Page 4 Lines 8-12 “She was more than seven years older than the incumbent record holder…”. The
authors leave out the fact that the second, third and fourth current record holders are Kane Tanaka
age 119 yrs 107 days and Sarah Knauss, age 119 years and 97 days, and Lucile Randon, age 118 years
and 340 days, all who are about 3 years younger. See:
hps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_veried_oldest_people. Oming these individuals is an
aempt to make Calment a much greater outlier than she is and is withholding facts to service their
purpose.
Page 4 lines 32-41. The authors state that the “Real Facts” paper “aacks” only an interview with
Novoselov and a preprint by Zak. Firstly they do not discuss the arguments against those references.
Secondly they state that the following addional “evidence” was ignored by the “Real Facts” authors:
• Reference 4 was a non-peer reviewed arcle, with no date cited, on an entrepreneurial an-aging
industry website known to publish aenon geng arcle to increase trac to the site. The website
is inaccessible at the me of wring this review
• Reference 5 was published online 11/4/19. The authors claim this arcle was available to Robine et
al before their publicaon on 9/16/19, but this would not have been possible because the Robine
arcle was published 2 months earlier. On the other hand, their arcle published two months later
makes no menon of the 9/16/19 Robine el al paper despite making numerous claims refuted by the
Robine et al arcle. Reference 5 aempts to make a claim that the Calment claim is false based upon
comparing Bayesian-calculated probabilies of Madame Calment living to age 122 vs her daughter
taking on Madame Calment’s identy. Calculang the laer probability was especially based upon
mathemacally baseless assumpons. The authors neglect to cite the Feb 2020 arcle by Francois
Robin-Champigneul, that appears in the same journal the following year that directly refutes their
argument, stang that it “contains major errors, making its results subjecve and invalid” see:
hps://pubmed-ncbi-nlm-nih-gov.ezproxy.bu.edu/31928146/
• Reference 6 is a non-peer reviewed book sold on Amazon
• Reference 7 is nothing more than a summary of the above “references”
Page 4, line 46. The authors stat that her claimed age would be a stascally signicant outlier if
securely validated and then state “this has inuenced thinking on whether or not life expectancy will
reach a maximum limit”. This is a ridiculous thing to say since rstly, the oldest person ever in the
world, whether they be 119 or 122 will always be an extreme outlier. Secondly, there is no dierence
in the oldest human reaching 119 or 122 in terms of the arguments for or against a maximum limit or
for immortality.
Results
Page 5, lines 24-42. The authors state that their new “damning evidence” is the following: They
found signatures of Jean Calment on nancial documents in 1931, 1932 and 1933 that were a clear
and permanent change that can only be explained by an identy switch. A series of signatures are
shown in Figure 1. They also received tesmony from the son of the sanitorium where Jeanne’s
mother was treated for TB who says that it was Jeanne, not her mother Yvonne. I am of course not a
handwring expert, but I personally would not take any stock in their claim based on what they show
(without by the way any citaon of each signature) and the overwhelming evidence presented in the
“Real Facts” paper indicang that Jeanne Calment truly lived to 122 years. The claim of a son is
hearsay and in the context of the authors taking eorts to support their conspiracy theory counter to
the overwhelming facts is not proof.
Zak states that there is no exceponal paern of longevity in Madame Calment’s family which
contributes to proof that Madame Calment’s age is false. There are many cases of supercentenarians
who have no other family members achieving very old age (eg >90) and this argument of Zak’s is not
supportable.
There is otherwise nothing new in this paper and much of what is wrien is simply reiteraon of past
debunked arguments.
Reviewer 2 Comments to the Author
I have no direct comments to the authors
Associate Editor Comments to the Author
As other reviewers pointed out, this is not a scienc paper as it brings no new credible or logical
evidence to the author's claim. It ignores previously published arguments.
Author’s response to reviewer’s comments (11 Nov 2023)
Dear Lewis A. Lipsitz
Thank you for conducng peer-review of our arcle “comment on…”. We wish to appeal the decision
on the following grounds:
Our paper points out numerous short comings in “Real Facts” paper. The reviewers have not
challenged most of these points. If our points cannot be challenged because we were correct then
we deserve to have our comment published as a right to reply.
The rst reviewer makes a number of points about the quality of our references that were not peer
reviewed. This is a double standard since many of the references in the “real facts” paper are also
not peer reviewed.
They also note addional points that they feel we should have menoned. We can easily add
addional material to refute any such further points but it would increase the word count. This could
connue unl the paper becomes the length of our three volume books on the subject. We have
focussed on points made in the “real facts” paper for this reason, but if the reviewers want more
added we would be happy to include further points. It is not necessary to reject our comment paper
for such omissions.
The second reviewer provided no comments for us, the authors. This is remiss since they apparently
rejected our work. Not providing us with reasons means that we cannot respond and therefore
lessens the value of their review.
The Associate Editor said:
"As other reviewers pointed out, this is not a scienc paper as it brings no new credible or
logical evidence to the author's claim. It ignores previously published arguments."
We strongly disagree. The main purpose of our comment to the "Real facts paper" which was
published in your journal is to respond to the arguments presented there. We don't ignore them; on
the contrary we discuss them in detail and refute them. These refutaons which constute the main
body of our comment were ignored by the associate editor and reviewers. Neither the editor nor the
reviewers have menoned any shortcomings in our refutaon of the arguments raised in the "Real
facts" paper.
We will now address the points of the rst reviewer in detail.
“Page 2 Lines 6-11. “The authencity of her age was validated by Michel Allard and Jean-
Marie Robine who published popular books” Authors leave out fact that Robine and Allard
authored an arcle in Science. Authors’ indicaon that Robine and Allard published in
popular books infers there was no peer review and is misleading. I see they do menon the
reference in the introducon and so this should be in the abstract [Robine JM, Allard M. The
oldest human. Science. 1998 Mar 20;279(5358):1834-5. doi:
10.1126/science.279.5358.1831h. PMID: 9537897]”
At no point do we cricise the validators for a lack of peer-review either implicitly or explicitly. The
reviewer feels we should give more weight to the validator’s arcle in Science tled “The oldest
human”. This was a one-page arcle published in the journal as a leer with very few details beyond
their claim to have completed the validaon. The main idea of this leer was that Jeanne's ancestors
were very long-lived. We have refuted this point, but this is not directly related to the validaon of
her longevity. The bulk of the informaon about their validaon was indeed only published in the
books that they have cited in the “real facts” paper. We would be happy to add a comment to this
eect if the reviewer feels it is necessary.
“The authors leave out the fact that the second, third and fourth current record holders are
Kane Tanaka age 119 yrs 107 days and Sarah Knauss, age 119 years and 97 days, and Lucile
Randon, age 118 years and 340 days, all who are about 3 years younger. See:
hps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_veried_oldest_people. Oming these individuals
is an aempt to make Calment a much greater outlier than she is and is withholding facts to
service their purpose.”
We would be happy to add this point, but the fact that Jeanne Calment’s claimed record is sll three
years and 57 days ahead of the runners up some 26 years aer her death, while the number of
validated supercentenarians increased by several orders of magnitude since her me, is hardly an
argument that she is less of an outlier.
“Page 4 lines 32-41. The authors state that the “Real Facts” paper “aacks” only an interview
with Novoselov and a preprint by Zak. Firstly, they do not discuss the arguments against
those references.”
We do in fact refute the arguments against these references. Some points are now less relevant and
for brevity we do not discuss them all. If the reviewer feels that there are specic points that we
should address, then we would be happy to add them.
“Secondly, they state that the following addional “evidence” was ignored by the “Real
Facts” authors:
• Reference 4 was a non-peer reviewed arcle, with no date cited, on an entrepreneurial
an-aging industry website known to publish aenon geng arcle to increase trac to
the site. The website is inaccessible at the me of wring this review”.
The reviewer is mistaken. We do not claim that they ignored this interview in reference 4. The “real
facts” paper cited it and cricised it. We would not have referenced it otherwise. It is indeed no
longer available at the link given in the “real facts” paper and ours but can be retrieved from
archive.org.
“• Reference 5 was published online 11/4/19. The authors claim this arcle was available to
Robine et al before their publicaon on 9/16/19, but this would not have been possible
because the Robine arcle was published 2 months earlier. On the other hand, their arcle
published two months later makes no menon of the 9/16/19 Robine el al paper despite
making numerous claims refuted by the Robine et al arcle.”
We state clearly in our comment paper that it was a preprint of this paper that was ignored. The
preprint was available from May 2019. The nal version had been submied before the “real facts”
paper appeared and therefore has no references prior to that date.
“Reference 5 aempts to make a claim that the Calment claim is false based upon comparing
Bayesian-calculated probabilies of Madame Calment living to age 122 vs her daughter
taking on Madame Calment’s identy. Calculang the laer probability was especially based
upon mathemacally baseless assumpons. The authors neglect to cite the Feb 2020 arcle
by Francois Robin-Champigneul, that appears in the same journal the following year that
directly refutes their argument, stang that it “contains major errors, making its results
subjecve and invalid”.
Francois Robin-Champigneul is a non-academic engineer who has sought to refute the switch
hypothesis. His comments show that he has no experse to understand our Bayesian assessment.
This comment paper only aempts to refute the “real facts” paper. We have refuted Francois Robin-
Champigneul elsewhere and it would extend the comment paper unnecessarily to repeat it.
“• Reference 6 is a non-peer reviewed book sold on Amazon • Reference 7 is nothing more
than a summary of the above “references”.
The following 13 references in the “real facts” paper are from non-peer reviewed books including the
validators own popular books: 1,2,3,5,7,8,9,13,14,15,23,26,27.
“Page 4, line 46. The authors stat that her claimed age would be a stascally signicant
outlier if securely validated and then state “this has inuenced thinking on whether or not
life expectancy will reach a maximum limit”. This is a ridiculous thing to say since rstly, the
oldest person ever in the world, whether they be 119 or 122 will always be an extreme
outlier. Secondly, there is no dierence in the oldest human reaching 119 or 122 in terms of
the arguments for or against a maximum limit or for immortality.”
It is not correct that the oldest person would be an extreme outlier to the extent that Jeanne
Calment would be. Her claimed longevity has indeed inuenced the demography of aging beyond
what the runners up would have achieved. For example, Jim Vaupel wrote “the annual risk of death
aer age 114 cannot rise much above 50% unless Jeanne Louise Calment’s rigorously documented
lifespan of 122.45 years is fraudulent” - (Exceponal Lifespans, Springer, 2021). There are many more
examples of this kind of thinking in the academic literature.
“I am of course not a handwring expert, but I personally would not take any stock in their
claim based on what they show (without by the way any citaon of each signature) and the
overwhelming evidence presented in the “Real Facts” paper indicang that Jeanne Calment
truly lived to 122 years.”
Handwring experts are not needed to see the very clear and abrupt change in Jeanne Calment’s
signature following eight years of stability. Anyone who examines this with an open mind would see
clearly that it indicates a switch. We can easily provide source informaon for each signature at the
cost of more words. Note that the validators provided some signature samples themselves on a
similar basis. The so-called “overwhelming evidence” is exactly what we debunk in this comment
paper, but the reviewer has ignored our points.
"They also received tesmony from the son of the sanitorium where Jeanne’s mother was
treated for TB who says that it was Jeanne, not her mother Yvonne… The claim of a son is
hearsay and in the context of the authors taking eorts to support their conspiracy theory
counter to the overwhelming facts is not proof.”
Jeanne Calment was the mother of Yvonne Calment, and not vice-versa. Jeanne’s mother was
Margarete Gilles, and she was not treated in any sanatorium. Unfortunately, the reviewer shows lack
of understanding of the subject. It seems to us that he didn’t take me to study the complicated case
of Jeanne Calment. Instead, he presented some unfair comments to jusfy the refutaon of our
paper.
The son of the medical director from the sanatorium is a well-educated and respected French
architect. He is very sure and clear about his tesmony from his father that it was Jeanne Calment
and not her daughter Yvonne who was treated at the sanatorium in Leysin. He has no reason to lie
about this. This evidence is much stronger than the evidence presented in “Real facts” in favour of
their claim that it was Yvonne who was treated there. The reviewer here resorts to calling Zak’s
switch hypothesis a “conspiracy theory” ignoring our points about the inappropriateness of this
tacc in our comment paper.
“Zak states that there is no exceponal paern of longevity in Madame Calment’s family
which contributes to proof that Madame Calment’s age is false. There are many cases of
supercentenarians who have no other family members achieving very old age (eg >90) and
this argument of Zak’s is not supportable.”
Zak did not claim that this is evidence against her claim. He was refung an implicaon from the
work of the validators that it supports her claim.
“There is otherwise nothing new in this paper and much of what is wrien is simply
reiteraon of past debunked arguments.”
The purpose of the comment paper is to debunk the claims in the “real facts” paper. The reviewer
has not challenged the numerous points to this aect that we have included. In addion, it adds new
strong evidence for the switch from the signature samples.
Examples of important points we made refung claims in the “real facts” paper, and that were not
challenged by the reviewers include:
• The identy switch would be invisible in the document record that the validators relied on.
• Mme Calment made many errors in her tesmony that should have alerted the validators to
the possibility of a mother/daughter switch.
• The 16 facts listed in the “real facts” paper as evidence that she was genuine are in fact
things that her daughter would have known.
• The authors missed the pro-switch nature of her memory of Marthe Fousson.
• The repeated use of the term “conspiracy theory” is inappropriate and unscienc.
• The authors wrongfully accuse Zak of claiming that her extreme longevity was impossible.
• Their modelling of the probability of her longevity gave a gure smaller than the one we
used in our Bayesian analysis.
• They overesmate the number of centenarians that could have set a longevity record by a
factor of ten.
• The evidence presented in “real facts” for Yvonne being treated in Leysin is very shaky and
was refuted by further invesgaon.
To conclude, we believe that the review was not done appropriately. We ask you to reconsider the
review and to choose reviewers who would study the subject carefully and do not have conict of
interest.
Sincerely N Zak, P. Gibbs
Final decision leer from editor-in-chief (11 Nov 2023)
I am sorry, but we do not feel your manuscript is a good t for JGMS and need to adhere to our
original decision.
Lew Lipsitz
