Originally posted by npetreley
There are more than a few anecdotes. I pointed out before that if you simply do a search for yourself, you'll find LOTS of cases of people getting a third set of teeth, especially if they live well over 100. I just did a search and came up with 11 hits before I stopped looking.
Someone mentioned that some of the links I provided refer to people who died quite some time ago. Considering that there were only 4,000 people over 100 in 1960, and the population above 100 gets even smaller as you go back in time, that actually strengthens my case because the number of reported cases is much more statistically significant as you go back in recent history.
Someone also asked if there was medical literature on this. I found this reference in one of the hits on the topic:
So I looked for the Gould and Pyle book, and found it. Here's a link. Note that the "anomalies and curiosities" referred to here is
longevity not the fact that these people got new teeth. Back in the late 1800s, was anomalous for people to live that long. The extra teeth were just an observation about these people who had unusual longevity. Once again, if Gould and Pyle could note this occurrence in 24 subjects back in 1890, then the statistical significance is quite remarkable.
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/GouAnom.html
Have you ever gotten an e-mail that was passed around to you claiming all kinds of "interesting" facts, just at the edge of believability? That is where anecdotal evidence gets you. Off the cuff comments from Uncle Billy's cousin Marvin just cannot be construed as evidence for third sets of teeth, especially coming from the 1800's or 1700's - when these people may have seen a doctor once or twice in their lives. No one could have even made an effort to verify the claim, and playing jokes on "city doctors" was not unheard of then.
If a city doctor came out to the farm town and visited with cranky old Mr. Mulligan, and Mr. Mulligan wanted to play a trick on the old Doctor, he and his family might have gone into fabulous detail talking about his extra set of teeth. The doctor might have made a note of it in passing as a "curiosity", and never been able to verify the fact.
On the other hand, what if Emily Johnson made a joke in the general store about her dentures being a third set of teeth, and cousin Sue heard her and misunderstood? What if later, after Ms Johnson was dead Sue told the story of Cousin Emily's third set of teeth to the country Doctor? What if the doctor, knowing Sue to be a trustworthy member of the community decided that it couldn't hurt to take her word for it, and wrote it up in his report?
What if an unethical doctor (or maybe 2 unethical writers) included accounts such as these just two bump up their book sales (see Ripley's Believe It Or Not for an example)?
Now that you have found some references from the medical literature, you are one step closer to having enough evidence to confirm the fact of third sets of teeth, but not really very close yet. There have been thousands of people in the 21st and 20th centuries who lived to or past 100. It should not be hard, if the extra teeth are a fact, to uncover a few WELL DOCUMENTED cases of extra teeth in the medical literature. Now we keep dental records and have all kinds of means of actually confirming this phenomenon... is that why instances of it have dropped off so significantly in the past few years?
On the book reference you cited, I have this chart from the book:
It may be interesting to review the statistics of Haller, who has collected the greatest number of instances of extreme longevity. He found: --
1000 persons who lived from 100 to 110 ; 15 persons who lived from 130 to 140 ; 60 `` `` `` `` 110 to 120 6 `` `` `` `` 140 to 150 ; 29 `` `` `` `` 120 to 130 ; 1 person `` `` `` to 169
Comare to this:
There are several geographical areas that have claimed inhabitants with extreme longevity, but after closer examination, these claims have been found to be false. Vilacamba, Ecuador almost became a tourist attraction because natives claimed their water was a fountain of youth leading to the many super-centenarians in that region.
What about the reports of people in the Russian Caucases living to 150 years and beyond? Remember the Dannon yogurt commercials? In fact, those purported super-centenarians were taking on the identities of their parents, aunts and uncles. Again, the oldest person from whom we have multiple forms of proof-of-age is Madame Calment.
Madame Calment was 122 when she died..
Life span is the maximum age obtainable for the species and is defined by the age of the oldest living individual. In the case of humans, that individual was Madame Jeanne Calment who died at the age of 122 years in August, 1997. Madame Calment therefore had a tremendous responsibility ... in her later years, every day she lived, she extended the human life span by a day.
from
http://www.bumc.bu.edu/Departments/PageMain.asp?Page=5749&DepartmentID=361
So either the BUMC is lying, or the authors of this book were relaying some questionable statistics. I think the BUMC study is more likely to be accurate.
If the authors of the book are passing on inaccuracies in one case, why should I take their mention of extra teeth as strong evidence that this phenomenon takes place?
Rigor is important to science. You may have been doing this all as an excercise in uncovering the methods (or prejudices?) of science, but if you are really interested in whether there are cases where third sets of teeth grown, you would be doing well to look for confirmed medical evidence, not recycled anecdotal accounts from folk-lore and from sensationalist books.
One other question: is it clear from the book reference that any of the "reported cases" were definitely a third full set of teeth of the kind you describe and not a misunderstanding or misdocumentation of supernumerary teeth like LewisWildermuth described?
