The patterns on the 40 and 70 year old triathlete match far too well. I'm calling bullshit. The "70 year old triathlete" scan is just further up the leg of the 40 year old.
You find it surprising that two different humans have the same muscles in the same locations? Have you ever noticed that chicken wings also have the same meat in the same spot across two different wings?
This is too stupid to answer to, but have you noticed Yao Ming and Britney Spears do not look the same? Good.
Now have you noticed carbon atoms are strikingly similar? Good, almost there.
Somewhere in-between these two views unique features emerge. Tell me where on the scale of atom to human the quads are? There is plenty in these pictures that is unique in the two persons depicted.
There is no need to lie to make a good argument for exercise. This image belong on your grandmothers Facebook page at best.
I agree that it's typical for authors to cherry pick the samples used to illustrate their major message most forcefully.
That's why discriminating readers (like us) should rigorously overlook pretty pictures and instead look only at: 1) the amount of separation between groups (big effect?), 2) the stat. significance across the given population (consistent signal?), 3) the constraints the authors used to create that population (representative of the real world?), and 4) whether the discriminating signal they chose selectively detects the causal effect they propose.
It seems reasonable to me. I did a triathlon several months ago. One of the other competitors was 73. We finished with approximately the same final time.
