Summary Critique of 'Lifespan: Why We Age and Why We Don’t Have To’ and ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions’

I read a few 1-page summaries of ‘Lifespan: Why We Age and Why We Don’t Have To’, by Harvard scientist David A. Sinclair, and ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions’, by Thomas S. Kuhn. I suspect the summaries of both books must be erroneous oversimplifications of either what really happens, or what the authors actually say, as I found the summary hypothesis to be insufficient and easily critiqued.

For 'Lifespan:...', I found this critique, A Science-Based Review of the World’s Best-Selling Book on Aging by Charles Brenner, to be a concise and plausible refutation of Sinclair's dual hypotheses, "What if aging is a disease" and "What if that disease is treatable". However, I wish it had gone into more detail about how telomeres work, and why "resetting" them isn't a viable solution to cure disease, stop aging, or extend life.

Paradoxically, extending telomeres is what you would do if you wanted to make those cells vulnerable to developmental dysfunction and cancerous growth. "But, if we then go on to cure cancer, problem solved!" Sinclair might declare. Fine, let's do that. But not by extending, replacing, or resetting telomere lengths, which would create the ideal conditions wherein cancers would return again and again, destroying millions of living cells each time.

Ultimately, Sinclair imagines a technological-magic wand that will somehow make cells 'younger', without making anything else worse. I wish humankind good luck with that.

For 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions', I find little fault with the summary. One nit is the claim that revolutions are sparked by discovery of a significant flaw (or flaws) in the popular or standard or consensus hypothesis. This seems unlikely to me. Instead, the dominant hypothesis must be found lacking on several points (ie, deviations from observed behavior) over a significant period of time: at least one human generation. Once the weight if insufficiency grows large enough, and alternative hypotheses are shown to be more accurate, will there be movement to replace the old theory. When that happens, the change can feel revolutionary. But, it was due to an accumulation of discrepancies, and the parallel development of superior hypothesis over a long period of time.

Indeed, "advances in science come one death at a time," (sometimes called Planck's Principle). Usually, advances in science (not to say new scientific truths) become accepted only after the scientists holding the old ideas die off, and younger generations familiar with new ideas to take over. The new ideas don't convince opponents but rather outlast them.