Aubrey de Grey‘s claims that aging can be defeated, which he voiced at TEDGLOBAL last year and at TED2006,
"exist in a kind of antechamber of science, where they wait (possibly
in vain) for independent verification". While they "don’t compel the
assent of many knowledgeable scientists", they’re also "not
demonstrably wrong".

That’s the overall (in)conclusion of the challenge put forth last year by the MIT Technology Review
to scientists to disprove de Grey’s "Strategies for Engineered
Negligible Senescence" (SENS). Three submissions by scientists and
groups of scientists have been analyzed by five judges – all the details in this previous post – and the magazine announced yesterday
the results of the jury’s work: "SENS is a collection of hypotheses
that … cannot rise to the level of being scientifically
verified. However, by the same token, the ideas of SENS have not been
conclusively disproved". The challenge remains open.

(Cross-posted on LunchOverIP)