Currently scientific progress gives back about four months of life expectancy per year.
Mostly false False in substance, right in a detail.
Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?
The second judge would not resolve this claim; the verdict shown is the first judge's.
What would count as true or false
The claim: as of July 2024, scientific progress adds about four months of life expectancy per calendar year. Use measured gains in life expectancy (period life expectancy at birth, global or for developed countries) over recent decades. True: measured long-run gains are about 3–5 months per year (e.g. the well-known Oeppen–Vaupel trend of about 3 months per year in best-practice countries, or global gains in that range) for a recent period, excluding COVID-year swings. Mostly true: the figure fits a longer historical trend but recent gains are somewhat lower (about 2–3 months per year). Mostly false: recent measured gains are clearly much lower (e.g. 1–2 months per year, or stalling in developed countries) and four months rests only on an older or selective trend. False: life expectancy has not been rising, or is rising by well under a month per year, with no reasonable basis for four months.
Set before the research began.
Evidence (3)
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E1 Broken Limits to Life Expectancy Science (Policy Forum, Oeppen & Vaupel) · 10 May 2002
“country has risen for 160 years at a steady pace of almost 3 months per year”
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E2 Estimates of regional and global life expectancy, 1800-2001. Gale (journal ISSN 00987921 per URL) · 1 September 2005
“But the pace of change slowed quickly in the late 1980s and 1990s to an annual increment in life expectancy of only 0.1 year per year of calendar time between 1990 and 2001”
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E3 Is the significant rise in life expectancy finally slowing down? Why? Al Jazeera · 14 October 2024
“the most recent decade of change in life expectancy is slower than it was in the last decade of the 20th century”
Reasoning
E1 records a long-run best-practice trend of "almost 3 months per year" over 160 years up to 2002. That is close to the claimed figure, but it is an older historical trend. E2 reports that global gains slowed to about 0.1 year (roughly 1.2 months) per calendar year between 1990 and 2001. E3 says the most recent decade of change has been slower still than the 1990s. Taken together, recent measured gains look well below four months a year, so the figure rests on an older trend, which matches the criteria for mostly false.
Cite this claim
Ray Kurzweil, “Currently scientific progress gives back about four months of life expectancy per year.” (said 9 July 2024). Verdict: mostly false. Reliability API, claim c_2c206def6fc4, method 0.1.0+28da144b, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_2c206def6fc4
This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.
Reply to this claim
More factual claims by Ray Kurzweil
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Mostly false
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Resolved true
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As of two or three years ago, 170,000 proteins had been worked through by people.
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Mixed
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Mostly true
“Argonne National Lab has used five of the world’s most powerful supercomputers to narrow a billion molecules down to a few thousand.”
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