Effect of model selection on the size of apparent mortality plateaus.

(a) Observed hazard rate data (blue) from Barbi and colleagues [1], fitted by log-linear hazard rate regressions for 861 diverse age ranges (grey lines). The Barbi and colleagues [1] age range (orange) produces the largest late-life mortality plateau and (b) produces the greatest overestimate of observed data (orange cross) at advanced ages (blue line, age 105 shown). Seeding random errors into other representative models—e.g., the 50- to 80-years-old regression (green point in (b), green line in (c))—produces (c) late-life mortality deceleration (pink points; p = 2 × 10−4) and constant hazard-rate regressions (black line) past age 105.