requires EXTREME suspension of disbelief

Right near the beginning, we are expected to believe that an experienced science-writer doesn’t know that the # for the average life span of a man born in the early 1900s does NOT mean that most men who made it to that age died instead of getting older. In fact, if a person’s made it to the “average life span” age, they have a really good chance of keeping on living past that age. (I’ve written an explanation below.)
Later, we’re told completely bogus info. about how rare people with “Rh negative” blood are. This podcast/book says they’re incredibly rare, so rare that it’s difficult to find someone in the U.S. with “Rh negative” blood. In reality, 18% of people in the U.S. have “Rh negative” blood. (Source: Cleveland Clinic website, accessed in 2024.)
More re “average life span:
Managing to live to the “average” age means the person has managed to live through all the things that could’ve killed them when they were younger. In the early 1900s, that meant they were’t one of the huge # of children who died from one of the deadly childhood-diseases that existed before vaccinations, and weren’t one of the people who died from having infections before antibiotics were available. (I’m talking about Western society, since that’s what this book/podcast is about.) Any even halfway-decent science writer knows that “average life span” is totally misleading, ESPECIALLY for those born in the early 1900s, because it includes the huge number of persons born in the early 1900s who died when they were babies or children. “Average life span” = add up how old each person born in the same time period was when they died; divide that total of all the death ages by the # of all those people. When a large # of the death ages are really low, the “average life span” is really low.

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