Content of review 1, reviewed on October 19, 2016

Dear Brandon Milholland,

Thank you for your interesting comments on your paper "Evidence for a limit to human life span", Dong et al., Nature 2016.

May I ask some questions regarding your Figure 1d, which presents the relationship between calendar year and the age that experiences the most rapid gains in survival:

How do you measure the gains in survival in this particular case: as a difference between the numbers of survivors over time, or as a difference between the LOGARITHMS of the numbers of survivors over time? Or something else?

What time intervals do you use, when you measure the gains in survival over time: just one year time interval (data for two close calendar years, say years 1981 and 1982, for example)? Or do you use longer time intervals?

Please advise. Thank you!

P.S.: By the way, you may enjoy our related published study, which explains why the chances for longevity records are much smaller than they were assumed earlier: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4342683/

Source

    © 2016 the Reviewer (CC BY 4.0).

References

    Xiao, D., Brandon, M., Jan, V. 2016. Evidence for a limit to human lifespan. Nature.