Wasn't the c60 rat study done with too few rats?
Q: How serious should we take the rat study, they only used six rats, right?
A: They used 18 rats. Six of those received the C60-olive oil mixture, and only those rats lived very much longer than the rats in the both control groups. If six rats would have been too little to judge the effects of chronic C60 toxicity, the study would have used more rats, because otherwise they'd have to repeat a multi-year study. The number of animals required for a longevity study would be similar as for a chronic toxicity study. The study concludes:
"Thus, based on previous investigations [44], C60 should be the most efficient ever material for extending lifespan."
and:
"Our results show that while olive oil treatment can lead to an increase of 18% of lifespan of treated rats, C60-olive oil can increase it up to 90%, as compared to controls."
Below is the survival graph from the study. We indicated the approximate median lifespan (months) of the rats in green:
The study concludes with a statistical calculation on how significant their findings are, based on a 18-rat study:
" C60-olive oil extends the lifespan of C60-treated rats with a probability of 0.999 and 0.995 with respect to water and olive oil treatments, respectively."
So they say that the likelihood that the C60 in the olive oil does not extend life is a mere 0.5%, The odds of life extension are 199 to 200, based on the sample size and findings of the study. These figures are highly significant, and thus we can with great certainty assume that C60 in olive oil indeed significantly extends life, even with just six rats living longer. This is mainly because all of them lived longer, and all of them lived much longer than the rats in the control groups. If you look at the graph, then you can see that the C60 rats lived typically about twice as long as the rats in the first control group, and about 55% longer than the rats in the second control group. That can't be a coincidence, as the rats were all genetically identical, fed the same way, housed the same way and of the same age. Still in doubt? Consider the fact that rats normally can't get that old at all! These lifespans have always considered to be unattainable for rats, under the most favorable of circumstances.