In Modern Biological Theories of Aging (2010), Jin dumps a bunch of hypotheses and theories willy-nilly. Wear-and-tear theory is included because “it sounds perfectly reasonable to many people even today, because this is what happens to most familiar things around them.” Yet Jin entirely excludes antagonistic pleiotropy, the mainstream and 70-year-old solid evolutionary account for why aging is an inevitable side effect of evolution for reproductive fitness.
This review has 617 citations. It’s by a prominent researcher with a very high h-index. It is disturbingly shallow. If it’s missing antagonistic pleiotropy, what else is it leaving out?
Update: Be very suspicious about “review” articles on theories of aging. The field has not managed to narrow down theories of aging, or even a definition of aging, so old bad ideas like “wear-and-tear” linger on while rock-solid theories can be casually ignored.
Aging research is the wild west
In Modern Biological Theories of Aging (2010), Jin dumps a bunch of hypotheses and theories willy-nilly. Wear-and-tear theory is included because “it sounds perfectly reasonable to many people even today, because this is what happens to most familiar things around them.” Yet Jin entirely excludes antagonistic pleiotropy, the mainstream and 70-year-old solid evolutionary account for why aging is an inevitable side effect of evolution for reproductive fitness.
This review has 617 citations. It’s by a prominent researcher with a very high h-index. It is disturbingly shallow. If it’s missing antagonistic pleiotropy, what else is it leaving out?
Update: Be very suspicious about “review” articles on theories of aging. The field has not managed to narrow down theories of aging, or even a definition of aging, so old bad ideas like “wear-and-tear” linger on while rock-solid theories can be casually ignored.