According to The New Yorker, the team of three researchers who worked with Jeanne Calment in the final years of her life to verify the details of her youth — and with it, the truth of her age — was convinced that their subject was indeed born in 1875. Even some of the language she used, the researchers claim, proved that her formative years had taken place before the turn of the century. But in recent years, a small circle of academics has fought through various channels to make clear their skepticism towards Calment’s claim to have been the oldest person to have ever lived.

Led by Russian mathematician Nikolay Zak, these skeptics argue that the woman claiming to be 122-year-old Jeanne Calment wasn’t 122 at all — or even, they say, Jeanne Calment. Rather, a paper Zak published in the academic journal Rejuvenation Research presents the “hypothesis that Jeanne’s daughter Yvonne acquired her mother’s identity after her death to avoid financial problems and that Jeanne Calment’s death was reported as Yvonne’s death in 1934.” According to Zak, the woman claiming to be Calment was a generation younger than she said she was. Zak’s theory, however, has not been accepted by many academics, who argue that it is impossible (per The New Yorker).

Calment’s record, however, may finally be under threat. The third oldest person ever, Japan’s Kane Tanaka, is almost 119 at the time of writing and is still going strong.