Scientists are questioning the idea that the human lifespan has a limit

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Jeanne Calment, the French woman who holds the record for the longest verified lifespan, died in 1997 at 122 years old.

Few people, of course, ever become supercentenarians — 110 years old or older — and even fewer hit 115.

So few people have exceeded that age, in fact, that a group of researchers published an analysis in the journal Nature last year arguing that the human species' lifespan plateaus around 115.

But a number of scientists are now rebutting that analysis with five separate commentaries published in Nature on June 28.

The authors of these pieces argue that the original analysis relied on statistics that were incomplete or analyzed in a way that led to a false conclusion. They suggest two alternatives: We either don't have enough data to know if the human lifespan has a limit, or the plateau is closer to 125 than 115.