We’ll start with the NYTimes:
The study, which received broad press coverage, said that 150 genetic variants predictive of longevity had been identified among New England centenarians and that a test based on those variants could predict who would live to extreme old age.
But on Wednesday, the senior author of the report, Dr. Thomas T. Perls of Boston Medical Center, part of Boston University’s School of Medicine, said in an e-mail message that he had been “made aware that there is a technical error in the lab test” used on some of the centenarians. The results are now being re-examined, but a preliminary analysis suggests that “the apparent error would not affect the overall accuracy of the model,” he said.
Others disagree
Dr. David Altshuler of Massachusetts General Hospital, explained that using different types of gene chips to scan the genome, as the Boston University researchers had done with their centenarians, was widely recognized as a source of possible problems.
The LA Time weighed in, citing Newsweek:
A few aspects of the study raised red flags for geneticists.
First, the impressive 77% prediction accuracy was unheard of for similar types of reports, and particularly stood out given the relatively small number of subjects for this study. The study featured more than 1,000 centenarians — an impressive number given how rare it is for people to live this long. But most genetic studies of this type (ones that look at the entire genome to try to find associations with particular traits or diseases) need DNA data from tens or hundreds of thousands of people to reach meaningful conclusions.