I was looking at Wikipedia's list of oldest people (some of them still alive) link and thought of this "experiment"..
- We put together a list of questions directed towards all people who are older than 110 years (Supercentenarians). The questions would have to be such, where statistics of the answers would give us meaning relevant to future longevity research (ideas where to search further, what areas to explore, etc..)
- We put up a website for this project, and create a system where researchers can log in and keep adding data (which is published for everyone to see).
- The system allows for public "question suggestions" where we can add the good questions to the questionairy
- The system also allows for anyone to download the current questionary and volounarily gets it answered from their local supercentenerians then return the results to us (ofcourse in such situations as authenticity verification we would need proof of age, a copy of photo ID of the voluunteer and the supercenterian + a photo taken from them together)
- This would be an ongoing project for a long, long time
Some questions for the Supercentenerians from the top of my head:
- List your top 10 favourite foods / drinks
- What's the longest habbit(s) you've had
- List of your favourite things to do
- Where did you grow up
- List of places where you lived (how long each location)
- What kind of plants do you keep around your house
- What do you think is bad for health
- What do you think is the key to your long life
- etc..
Each question added to the questionairy would be accompanied with an explanation on what is hoped to be accomplished by gathering statistics of that particular answer. Some questions would in time obviously get obsolete and removed from the questionairy.
What I'm thinking this project could accomplish is reveal some of the "secrets" of super long life and point us in the right direction on what to research, etc..
What do you guys think about this one?