Beginner's guide to longevity research
I'll offer a contrarian view: longevity research, as in the current scope, is about as accurate and useful as Ray Kurzweil's predictions from the 90s.<p>Let's take caloric restriction, for instance, which is all the rage. Trouble is, all of the evidence we have is in mice or lesser animals, <i>and the comparison is animals on caloric restriction against animals being force fed to the point of obesity</i>. Let me repeat that: in research that shows caloric restriction increasing lifespan in animal models, they are not comparing to animals on a normal diet. So it's entirely plausible all this caloric restriction research findings is just confirmation of the fact that obesity shortens lifespans.<p>This isn't even touching on the point that correspondence between animal models and humans is abysmally bad. It's the best we have, but there's a very good reason drugs need to go through three stages of human testing after it's been proven successful in animals. With caloric restriction, we don't even have consistent positive results in monkeys, only in rodents.<p>Has any of this longevity stuff ever been tested in humans? Obviously not, since it would take many decades.<p>Some pointers for further reading:<p><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0891584914002317" rel="nofollow">https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S089158491...</a><p><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3765579/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3765579/</a>