Earlier this month, an unusual prize ceremony got under way. Five Nobel laureates gathered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, not to receive further accolades themselves, but to present the Ig Nobel prizes. Now in their 34th year, these are awarded to researchers whose discoveries “make people laugh, then think”.

One winner was Saul Justin Newman, whose research probing the quality of demographic data certainly made me laugh and think. Places with surprising clusters of individuals reaching remarkable ages, with centenarians or........

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