this has got to be among the most useless and idiotic scientific experiments ever conducted. Both the experiment and the article are rife with wharrgarbl so strong, I'm ashamed to be a scientist.

They defined mortality as "age-associated deaths" and eliminated any cause of death they didn't believe was associated with aging.

most death due to aging is caused by a weakened immune system allowing for many other ailments. The risk of overeating has nothing to do with old-age deaths, it has to do with heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and others. Why you would want to equate the two is mind-boggling when there are such clear other negative results of being obese.


and the counter argument:

"Today there are a lot of very healthy people who look like skeletons because they bought into this," said Raj Sohal

yes, that's clearly the problem in America and Western Europe, people are just too skinny!

A major cause of death for monkeys is knife fights. Clearly, this has skewed the results.

fizzix_is_fun: this has got to be among the most useless and idiotic scientific experiments ever conducted. Both the experiment and the article are rife with wharrgarbl so strong, I'm ashamed to be a scientist.

Among the most useless and idiotic!? It doesn't sound like you're familiar with current research in biology. Caloric restriction is a valid and hotly researched topic because it DRASTICALLY extends lifespan in most organisms, and it's not particularly clear why. It needed to best tested in primates.

If you read the paper, they reported what they found, the good and the bad. If it had been all negative results, it still would had been a Science paper, it's that important of a question. As with any research, there are valid criticisms (and that blog touches on some). But when you do a 20-year longitudinal study (which is still ongoing), there are no do-overs.

Did the popular press oversell this research? Yes, just like they do with every big weekly science story. Your bone to pick is with them. Honestly, it doesn't seem like you read the paper. Hell, it doesn't even sound like you read the abstract. You read a blog and regurgitated it.

most death due to aging is caused by a weakened immune system allowing for many other ailments. The risk of overeating has nothing to do with old-age deaths, it has to do with heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and others.

Email the NIH, you solved aging! Now we can redirect the grants to whatever lame physics project you're working on. Seriously, where are you pulling this crap from? You really don't know what you're talking about.

I'm ashamed to be a scientist.

I'm ashamed that you think you're a scientist too.

Sharch: fizzix_is_fun: this has got to be among the most useless and idiotic scientific experiments ever conducted. Both the experiment and the article are rife with wharrgarbl so strong, I'm ashamed to be a scientist.

Among the most useless and idiotic!? It doesn't sound like you're familiar with current research in biology. Caloric restriction is a valid and hotly researched topic because it DRASTICALLY extends lifespan in most organisms, and it's not particularly clear why. It needed to best tested in primates.

If you read the paper, they reported what they found, the good and the bad. If it had been all negative results, it still would had been a Science paper, it's that important of a question. As with any research, there are valid criticisms (and that blog touches on some). But when you do a 20-year longitudinal study (which is still ongoing), there are no do-overs.

Did the popular press oversell this research? Yes, just like they do with every big weekly science story. Your bone to pick is with them. Honestly, it doesn't seem like you read the paper. Hell, it doesn't even sound like you read the abstract. You read a blog and regurgitated it.

most death due to aging is caused by a weakened immune system allowing for many other ailments. The risk of overeating has nothing to do with old-age deaths, it has to do with heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and others.

Email the NIH, you solved aging! Now we can redirect the grants to whatever lame physics project you're working on. Seriously, where are you pulling this crap from? You really don't know what you're talking about.

I'm ashamed to be a scientist.

I'm ashamed that you think you're a scientist too.

Rocket scientology is hard.

Cagey B: A major cause of death for monkeys is knife fights. Clearly, this has skewed the results.

That, and the taunting. Dynamite brings on serious collateral damage.

P-R-A-Y F-O-R M-O-J-O

You know, I'm tired of experiments on monkeys.

There are enough fat dumbasses in this country that will sign up for medical experiments. And don't give me this ethical crap. Name 5 ways a fat dumbass is better than a monkey? You can't. So why is it ethical to put monkeys through death experiments and not fat dumbasses?

Don't taunt the calorie-restricted monkey?

Sharch: fizzix_is_fun: this has got to be among the most useless and idiotic scientific experiments ever conducted. Both the experiment and the article are rife with wharrgarbl so strong, I'm ashamed to be a scientist.

Among the most useless and idiotic!? It doesn't sound like you're familiar with current research in biology. Caloric restriction is a valid and hotly researched topic because it DRASTICALLY extends lifespan in most organisms, and it's not particularly clear why. It needed to best tested in primates.

If you read the paper, they reported what they found, the good and the bad. If it had been all negative results, it still would had been a Science paper, it's that important of a question. As with any research, there are valid criticisms (and that blog touches on some). But when you do a 20-year longitudinal study (which is still ongoing), there are no do-overs.

Did the popular press oversell this research? Yes, just like they do with every big weekly science story. Your bone to pick is with them. Honestly, it doesn't seem like you read the paper. Hell, it doesn't even sound like you read the abstract. You read a blog and regurgitated it.

most death due to aging is caused by a weakened immune system allowing for many other ailments. The risk of overeating has nothing to do with old-age deaths, it has to do with heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and others.

Email the NIH, you solved aging! Now we can redirect the grants to whatever lame physics project you're working on. Seriously, where are you pulling this crap from? You really don't know what you're talking about.

I'm ashamed to be a scientist.

I'm ashamed that you think you're a scientist too.

FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!

/grabs popcorn and beer

You sound fat.

A co-worker recently quit to start his own company based on some calorie restriction findings. Oh well, still just depends on if he can get investors.

She sounds fat.

/ Obligatory.

MBK: You know, I'm tired of experiments on monkeys.

There are enough fat dumbasses in this country that will sign up for medical experiments. And don't give me this ethical crap. Name 5 ways a fat dumbass is better than a monkey? You can't. So why is it ethical to put monkeys through death experiments and not fat dumbasses?

5 ways a fat dumbass might be better than a monkey.
By Mr. Sticky Hands
Grade 3.

1. Fat dumbasses do not bite. Not your fingers or your face or your nads. Monkeys have been know to do that.

2. It's easy to run away from the occasional fat dumbass that violates rule one.

3. Fat dumbasses are less capable of doing my job than monkeys.

4. Someone needs to keep the mobility scooter companies in business

5. When bears attack, it's good to have a fat dumbass handy.

I wonder which fast food chain the skeptic is working for. Her profile is rather lacking in details.

BIGNICKEL: A co-worker recently quit to start his own company based on some calorie restriction findings. Oh well, still just depends on if he can get investors.

I'd tell him that if people should be able to live longer on less calories, then companies should be able to live longer on less capital.

I was skeptical because all of the calorie restricted research thusfar has been on worms, and the calories were restricted enough to have lowered the organism's metabolism. The Mice studies are barely above statistical noise. No to mention the fact that mammals *really* don't like operating below a certain metabolic rate. To lower the caloric intake to the point of the worms in the study would induce a hibernetic state, assuming that creature hibernated, otherwise coma and eventual death.

Somewhat relevant

They didn't even mention the biggest, most debilitating effect of a calorie restricted diet - hunger. I tried a well-designed calorie restricted diet for 2 weeks and on some days, it was excruciating. Especially when you're in the vicinity of other people who are enjoying some really delicious food. I'm not overweight - 5'11, 150lbs. - but I thought I'd try the diet just to see if I could do it. It's very difficult to sustain.

If 50% of monkeys avoid paying tax and have an unjustified sense of entitlement to steal from the other 50%, then yes, monkeys and fat dumbasses are identical.

kabloink: I wonder which fast food chain the skeptic is working for. Her profile is rather lacking in details.

Or, you know, they could just be skeptical. It's not like fast food joints particularly need to worry about this. They've got the mass market sewn up, and when they need to lift business, they can just say, "Look, we have healthy options too! See, a SALAD so covered in meat that it's worse for you than the greasy turds we sell as hamburgers."

Further, fast food joints sell convenience, more than they do food.

Sticky Hands: 5 ways a fat dumbass might be better than a monkey.
By Mr. Sticky Hands
Grade 3.

1. Fat dumbasses do not bite. Not your fingers or your face or your nads. Monkeys have been know to do that.

2. It's easy to run away from the occasional fat dumbass that violates rule one.

3. Fat dumbasses are less capable of doing my job than monkeys.

4. Someone needs to keep the mobility scooter companies in business

5. When bears attack, it's good to have a fat dumbass handy.

A+. You get to be Mrs. Arigby's special helper this week!

Ugh, that was painful to read. Yes, we know that you're a more careful and perceptive scientist than most journalists. Still, could you turn down the volume on your WAKE UP SHEEPLE box, please?

Caloric restriction has profound metabolic effects, some of which appear to slow degenerative processes important in aging, others of which may actually be harmful. But please, my fellow Americans, feel free to continue stuffing yourselves with 150% of the calories that your couch-centered lifestyle demands. Our economy is counting on you, your consumption, and your demand for medical services!

wmoonfox: You sound fat.

You sound simian

THE BEST PART of this news is that somewhere, there are some idiots following this restrictive diet thinking they will live longer AND THEY WILL NOT SEE THIS RETRACTION.


HAHAHHAHAHAHAH

Jenny McCarthy maybe?!?!?


HAHHAHAHAHA

- Major scientific breakthrough rescinded two days after being announced (9:1)

Drew, whoever does your handicapping needs a good punch in the face. That was a 7:2 bet, at best.

On another topic, where do I cash all these betting tickets? I wants me an UltraMegaFark account...

Can we repeat this experiment with actual fat dumbasses?

jfarkinB: Caloric restriction has profound metabolic effects, some of which appear to slow degenerative processes important in aging, others of which may actually be harmful.

The point it raised very early was this, if you missed it: Nearly as many CR monkeys died as those on a normal diet. Therefore, quoting the selective 'age-related' death imbalance is assuming the conclusion when you throw away other deaths.

SHEEPLE-poking aside, this is a very good article. There's a lot of hullabaloo surrounding CR studies, and this one article says they're all full of crap. Keep in mind that some people would change their lifestyle if CR actually did extend lifespan by 30% with no side effects. But what if you're perpetually hungry all the time, and cranky as result? I don't need a world full of 120-yr-old cranky skinny hungry old parasites.

Remember the myth of the cricket. Eternal life is pointless - it's eternal youth that's the prize.

I will give death credit where credit is due. That is, if your parents died young, you will probably die young as well. This even applies to accidents and suicide. Longevity is dominated by heredity.

The biggest factor in whether you will live longer or shorter than your parents is how much you are like them, that is, your dominant genes, and how many recessive genes have expressed themselves in you but not them.

It cracks me up when I look at marathon runners, out suffering in the hope that they will live long lives. Sorry to disappoint, but I don't run, come from a family of non-runners who eat ordinary food, and we will outlive the vast majority of health freaks. Not only that, but our diseases are better than their diseases.

And there is not a DAMN thing they can do about it. They can eat gigantic, gelatinous cubes of tofu, fields of bean sprouts, exercise daily, not smoke or drink and make themselves miserable, and I am still going to outlive them. But they will spend their short, disease filled lives damning me and filled with self righteousness.

And they never shut up about it. A 103 year old relative was *assured* that if they just changed their diet to health food and exercised more, they would live to 105 or 107. They just laughed, had their daily tumbler of whiskey, lit up a cigarette, and later enjoyed steak and potatoes for dinner. They made it to 105 anyway.

Sharch: fizzix_is_fun: this has got to be among the most useless and idiotic scientific experiments ever conducted. Both the experiment and the article are rife with wharrgarbl so strong, I'm ashamed to be a scientist.

Among the most useless and idiotic!? It doesn't sound like you're familiar with current research in biology. Caloric restriction is a valid and hotly researched topic because it DRASTICALLY extends lifespan in most organisms, and it's not particularly clear why. It needed to best tested in primates.

If you read the paper, they reported what they found, the good and the bad. If it had been all negative results, it still would had been a Science paper, it's that important of a question. As with any research, there are valid criticisms (and that blog touches on some). But when you do a 20-year longitudinal study (which is still ongoing), there are no do-overs.

Did the popular press oversell this research? Yes, just like they do with every big weekly science story. Your bone to pick is with them. Honestly, it doesn't seem like you read the paper. Hell, it doesn't even sound like you read the abstract. You read a blog and regurgitated it.

most death due to aging is caused by a weakened immune system allowing for many other ailments. The risk of overeating has nothing to do with old-age deaths, it has to do with heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and others.

Email the NIH, you solved aging! Now we can redirect the grants to whatever lame physics project you're working on. Seriously, where are you pulling this crap from? You really don't know what you're talking about.

I'm ashamed to be a scientist.

I'm ashamed that you think you're a scientist too.

batman is a scientist.

syrynxx: But what if you're perpetually hungry all the time, and cranky as result? I don't need a world full of 120-yr-old cranky skinny hungry old parasites.

If calorie restriction works in primates, which is a dubious claim, the best outcome would be a treatment that replicates the benefits without the ridiculous diet required. Calorie restriction is unpleasant, and it's a very demanding diet. Better to pop a pill of cultured bacteria that digest the majority of the fats and sugars in your food before you can get at them, or something like that.

I prefer banana-flavored energy bars made from tofu.

Sorta funny because just not I was trying to find out if i could include white rice in my diet plan. The 'facts' are all over. So far I have learned rice:

1) low calorie and good for you!

2) will turn you into a fat diabetic

Monkey torture
/Monkey torture

Science doesn't really work that way. Researchers can't simply ignore the evidence that doesn't support their hypothesis
===================================

No, douchebag article writer... think of it this way. We're doing an experiment about age-related natural deaths.

If someone, say, gets stabbed to death.. We're obviously not going to count it. Those deaths are outside the bounds of the experiement.

Yes, it still skews the numbers slightly since we don't know what WOULD have happened.

/P.S. MANY MANY MANY experiements (not just this one) have been done and do in-fact show that calorie-restricted diets add many years to your life.

FTA: Science doesn't really work that way. Researchers can't simply ignore the evidence that doesn't support their hypothesis. That would be the difference between research done to build evidence to support a hypothesis, from science that is objectively studying a hypothesis.

No, but you can discard data that are irrelevant to your hypothesis. My work sometimes involves monitoring corals in the wild and their response to summer bleaching. If a coral colony gets hit by a boat and farked up, those data are discarded. You may or may not report that in your paper, but it would not be included in the dataset regardless.

MBK: You know, I'm tired of experiments on monkeys.

There are enough fat dumbasses in this country that will sign up for medical experiments. And don't give me this ethical crap. Name 5 ways a fat dumbass is better than a monkey? You can't. So why is it ethical to put monkeys through death experiments and not fat dumbasses?

1. Useful for roadside twinkie spills
2. Ballast
3. You never know when you'll want to make some nitro glycerine
4. They run slower than you do so the zombies will get them instead of you
5. Set on fire they burn longer and make a bigger smoke smudge than wet leaves on a bonfire.

I would go on but this is getting silly

jake3988: Science doesn't really work that way. Researchers can't simply ignore the evidence that doesn't support their hypothesis
===================================

No, douchebag article writer... think of it this way. We're doing an experiment about age-related natural deaths.

If someone, say, gets stabbed to death.. We're obviously not going to count it. Those deaths are outside the bounds of the experiement.

Yes, it still skews the numbers slightly since we don't know what WOULD have happened.

/P.S. MANY MANY MANY experiements (not just this one) have been done and do in-fact show that calorie-restricted diets add many years to your life.

I worked in a lab that studied aging in worms and mice.

The worms are isogenic, genetically identical, with a mutation in one of several genes in the insulin signalling pathway. The mutations can either increase or decrease lifespan, and can act either early (pre-reproductive) or late (post-reproductive)

The mice are inbred. They also showed increased lifespan. If they didn't die from the treatment

We had a seminar from a monkey person. He admitted that upwards of 30% of the cohort on CR diet died. Once you get rid of that 30 percent, though, yes, the cohort lives longer. The monkeys are not inbred, they show ample genetic variation.

Nobody's done this, but wouldn't it be interesting if the ones that lived longer shared some common genetic markers? They're genetically predisposed to be able to 1) survive a starvation diet, and 2) live longer because of it?

I think CR would work on primates. But I also think there are genetic predispositions.

/grains of salt... just eat good food

I find a few problems with her method and her analysis; first off she has a BS in nursing, not exactly credentials for doing structured statistical analysis of a journal article. Second, she never directly references an information on the article (she calls Science a "magazine") only the supplemental information, and also doesn't point out that overall mortality (not just age-related) was lower for the calorie restricted monkeys over the control group, nor does she try to explain lack of disease onset for the animals. Third, while trying to imply that there is a hidden pharmaceutical agenda in all of this she leaves out the fact that she works with the Competitive Enterprise Institute which has biases of its own.

I'm sure I missed a few things, since I just scanned over both articles, but to call her a "skeptic" is more than generous.

The scientists only thought they restricted their diets. In reality the monkeys were so hungry they were eating other monkeys.

whammer: The biggest factor in whether you will live longer or shorter than your parents is how much you are like them, that is, your dominant genes, and how many recessive genes have expressed themselves in you but not them.

I've never met one person who ran a marathon due to health reasons. They did it for a sense of accomplishment. While they all tended to take care of themselves with regular exercise, training for a marathon is something they'd do before the race, not something they'd do regularly. People who run many, many miles a day constantly probably are addicted to it.

What about quality of life? One of my grandparents was a fit old bird who lapped up everyday with laughter and exercise. He developed lung cancer from working with asbestos in his youth and died quickly with a lot of morphine. One of my girlfriends grandparents was bloated, lazy, and pessimistic about everything. They hated life and it hated them back and they spent years in ill health and died a slow painful death.

Take your pick!

A life on calorie restriction only seems longer.

Until they find something without calories that tastes as good as beer, I'll be waiting for the singularity instead.

LockeOak: No, but you can discard data that are irrelevant to your hypothesis.

But you cannot discard data that are relevant to my interests

jjorsett: A life on calorie restriction only seems longer.

Like how they say men who are married live longer.

I've actually met the U of W guy who did this work. He came and gave a talk to a bunch of us psychiatrists and neuroscientists who are working on Alzheimer Disease. The guy was very obviously anorexic. We were all a bit concerned about him, in fact. Especially when he mentioned restricting calories for his kids. It led to a lively discussion among us whether anorexia by proxy was a form of Munchausen's, and whether we had a responsibility to call in a report.

Science magazine > ambiguously-credentialed random blogger

'Nuff said.

FaceRape:batman is a scientist.

He's not Batman!

pivazena: We had a seminar from a monkey person. He admitted that upwards of 30% of the cohort on CR diet died. Once you get rid of that 30 percent, though, yes, the cohort lives longer. The monkeys are not inbred, they show ample genetic variation.

So those that don't die of starvation live longer. whoopdedoo.

Total deaths were not significantly different between the groups. And they boosted the diet of control, so there was only ~10% restriction from normal. That result implies restriction is a minor variable or requires a heck of a lot more to be effective. Given the wash in death rates, there needs to be a test developed that finds the preconditions for it to be useful.