aubrey wrote:
Two questions for those who know:
1) Is there a DNA sample from the person who died in 1997?
2) Does Jeanne's husband have any living closeish relatives (great-nieces etc)?
If yes and yes, the issue can be definitively answered in half no time: if DNA from the relative demonstrates close kinship to the person who died in 1997, that person was Yvonne, otherwise it was indeed Jeanne.
Greetings,
Much of what has been said in the Dec 4 piece is, to put it kindly, a "devil's advocate" conspiracy theory that is full of spin and misinformation. For a few examples:
1. Jeanne Calment was NOT the first French supercentenarian, so the assertion that it was so unusual for the very first person in France to reach age 122 is incorrect
2. Calment's case was NOT randomly selected at the start of the IDL. The IDL really wasn't formed until circa 2002-2003, well after Jeanne Calment had passed away. Her case was used as a starting point because the government of France did not bother to track deaths at age 110+ until 1987. Thus, Calment being the first French case in the IDL data was NOT random
3. Sending a single blurred photo around to ask uninformed people to guesstimate the age of the person in the photo is a complete study fail. Only one photo was used. What about using multiple photos? And control photos weren't used, either. And indeed, the general public generally has no idea what a supercentenarian might look like, or even the notion that they exist rarely crosses the mind of the general public. So those guesses, which seemed designed to get the result being looked for by choosing a photo showing Calment in a flattering light (blurred lines makes it harder to see wrinkles), mean virtually nothing
4. The allegation of motive remains unconvincing. Jeanne Calment's father died in 1931 so wouldn't the inheritance have already gone to Jeanne, no need to ID switch? For the person who died in 1934, supposed to be Yvonne, if Jeanne passed away and then Yvonne pretended to be Jeanne...that makes no sense as Jeanne's husband was still living and would have known, and he would have received the inheritance, making the ID switch very, very unlikely.
5. Indeed, Jeanne Calment lived in the same small city her entire life and was known to the community. Had she switched ID's, someone would have known.
6. So far, the biggest accusation of ID switching comes from an "insurance secrets" book...with unsourced allegations on a single page amounting to nothing more than a cautionary anecdote to those who issue and monitor life insurance policies to be ware of potential fraud.
7. Calment's grandson didn't die until 1963 and she didn't sign her "reverse mortgage" agreement until 1965. It stretches credibility to suggest that she managed to ID-switch 30+ years earlier in order to obtain a longer retirement pension. Do people think that someone would "plan" to live to "122" on paper? No. And let's not forget that 1965-1898=67 and 67+32=99 so even if 23 years younger, she still would have been old enough for a pension, and even age 99 is unlikely to be "conspired" to reach. Using Occam's razor, the simplest explanation is that no one, not even Jeanne, could have expected her to still be living in 1997.
8. The actual documentary evidence, 27+ documents never more than 12 years apart, leave very little room for conspiracy-theory construction. The number of people that would have to "go along with it" to make it work for not much benefit just doesn't seem likely. See here for details:
https://www.demogr.mpg.de/books/odense/6/09.htm
9. Most ID-fraud people "disappear" from society for many years, and often their family is unknown. There is a man in Costa Rica that currently claims to be "118" but there is a 99-year-gap in the records, he has not admitted to any family history, he started receiving a pension at "99". A claim like that has many hallmarks of ID switching: not enough information to locate the person in a context before the pension was applied for.
10. Many people whose age has turned out to be questionable at best have avoided the spotlight. The Lucy Hannah case is one such example, whereby there were NO media reports of her in her "supercentenarian" or "centenarian" years, no obituary, no public photo, etc. That's not the case with Jeanne Calment, who was open to investigators/researchers from the time that they asked her. She was probably interviewed more than any other supercentenarian. I find it hard to believe that someone trying to pull off an ID switch would have been that open.
11. There is the assertion that Calment "burned all her papers"--but consider the situation: her family line had gone extinct; she was without heir. You know who else burned their papers at their death, on their orders? US President George Washington.
12. I do not know if Jeanne Calment was DNA-tested but I believe that her body was buried in a traditional Catholic burial. From what I understand, her body was buried, not cremated:
I suppose some researchers could apply to obtain post-mortem DNA samples for a study, if necessary. I don't see the need that some feel to overly push rumors and conspiracies to achieve this goal.
The initial push to "re-investigate" the Calment case was based on a "green" misunderstanding that the IDL France data began as a totally random sample and just happened to pull Calment first...and what would be the odds of the very first pick to, oh, reach the all-time record? ASTOUNDING!!!
But, on closer inspection, we come to realize that Jeanne Calment's case is more akin to reporters flocking to a volcano after it has started putting on an eruptive show (such as Mount Kilauea in Hawaii). The IDL was not formed until a few years after Jeanne Calment had passed away, and the government of France had begun to track supercentenarians in 1987 due to the publicity surrounding Jeanne Calment being 112 in Arles and remembering Vincent Van Gogh. In short, the Jeanne Calment case was NOT randomly selected but intentionally selected...first, as someone who "remembered" Van Gogh; later, as a world's oldest person. That she pushed on to set the record as the oldest validated person ever could be said to be somewhat unusual, but we have to consider a few things also:
--the very first nation to track the entire population of a society was Sweden, which began in 1749. Thus by 1860, Sweden had validated data on their oldest persons.
--however, many nations did not get to the point of full coverage until much later. With relatively little data coverage and a low life expectancy it is not a surprise that the records were relatively low (age 110 was first undisputably reached in 1898, by a Dutchman). However, the second half of the 19th century saw great progress made in Europe, North America, and Japan in improving systems of recordkeeping, as well as economic, technological, health, etc. improvements. Calment's case came relatively near the start of a burst/explosion of improvements in the supercentenarian records, but is not that unusual. Most extreme value theorists have estimated the odds of the Calment case happening anywhere within the time frame at 1 in 7. Not so extreme because the odds are calculated against the backdrop of the total documented population, not just within one small town.
DNA testing could help further establish ID. I would consider Calment's case very very tight as it is, the odds of being able to pull off an ID switch seem higher (thus less likely to be true) when more facts are known. Let's not also forget that this isn't the only case that exists. Some persons 115+ already have had DNA collected. It would be a good idea to test as many validated persons 115+ as practical.
13. P.S. It's also untrue that the human nose stops growing once someone reaches adulthood. In fact, scientific studies show that the human nose, being cartilaginous, continues to grow slowly throughout people's lifetimes. Thus, trying to measure noses for photo comparisons over time is not correct.
