[notahacker]

Yeah, that comparison is so jarringly wrong it makes me question the rest of their research.

Modern Britons' life expectancies at 65 which actually are "comparable" with Victorian life expectancies at 65 are available in well publicised, frequently-updated and granular time series from ONS[1]. But since they suggest life expectancy is about twice as long for todays' 65 year olds as Victorian ones the authors appear to have deliberately distorted the truth by choosing a less relevant basis for comparison instead.

Needless to say, if they're prepared to commit statistical frauds as blatant as this, the rest of their claims should be regarded as suspicious especially the more outrageous longevity claims. It wasn't a surprise to find that one of the authors runs a nutrition supplement company and has been featured on Ben Goldacre's Bad Science blog before

Which is a shame, because there probably are valid, non-obvious points about aspects of Victorian diets and lifestyles that were healthier than ours, buried under wilfully misleading claims about degenerative diseases being a purely modern phenomenon.

[1]https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...

[lucozade]

Indeed. The like for like historical comparisons [1] that cover the period of the paper to today lend themselves to a very different interpretation. If anything, life expectancy for a 65yo dropped a little through their "golden age" and has been increasing since.

Also, if you do the 5yo comparison, life expectancy for a male was 54.6 in 1841 and 79.4 in 2011.

As this information is trivially available and the life expectancy claim is central to their argument, it's hard not to conclude that the article is willfully misleading.

[1] http://visual.ons.gov.uk/how-has-life-expectancy-changed-ove...