3 ms·

Hope this gains traction - imagine the societal consequences of optimizing human magnetic alignment in city planning and building/room layout. Also interesting

Hope this gains traction - imagine the societal consequences of optimizing human magnetic alignment in city planning and building/room layout. Also interesting and relevant: Magnetic alignment contributes to difficulty falling asleep (north-south alignment is best) [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280093617_The_Relationship_between_Quality_of_Sleep_and_Geographical_Directions_during_Sleeping_Process https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280093617_The_Relat...] Grazing cattle align on north-south axis [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23700176 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23700176]

yoavm 7y ago
Is it just me or is it really weird to start a scientific paper with "sleep has been one of God’s most precious blessings since human’s existence and it is vital for both body and soul"?
- schoen 7y ago
  It reminds me of a line in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner": https://www.litscape.com/author/Samuel_Taylor_Coleridge/The_Rime_Of_The_Ancient_Mariner_Part_5.html https://www.litscape.com/author/Samuel_Taylor_Coleridge/The_...
trehalose 7y ago
I'm extremely skeptical of the study you linked about magnetic alignment and sleep latency. Just looking at table 6 (the only table related to the only association stated significant), the stats for South-North sleepers look noticeably better than the stats for North-South sleepers. I'm no statistician, but just look at it. The South-North sleepers sample, versus the North-South (supposedly best) sleepers, has proportionately three times more people experiencing zero days weekly of difficulty getting to sleep, two-thirds as many people having even one day of difficulty, two-thirds as many people having two days of difficulty... and 50% more people having three days of difficulty, but even then, we're talking only four people each among a group of 47 vs a group of 35. Again, I'm no statistician, but does that last and smallest column overshadow the three much bigger columns with the opposite trend, to the point of being a 1 in 1000 result assuming the null hypothesis? Furthermore, the sleep measures were self-reported, through the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Inventory (PSQI), which I quote: >In Iran, Tehran psychiatry institute assessed the validity and reliability of the Farsi version of this questionnaire with 89.6% for sensitivity and 86.5% for specificity. Did the math behind this eye-catching <0.001 p-value take into account that the questionnaire used was measured to have a 10.4% false negative rate and a 13.5% false positive rate? I find it hard to believe. But I'd love to see a statistician who actually knows how to interpret these numbers tell me that I'm wrong.

yoavm 7y ago

Is it just me or is it really weird to start a scientific paper with "sleep has been one of God’s most precious blessings since human’s existence and it is vital for both body and soul"?

schoen 7y ago
It reminds me of a line in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner": https://www.litscape.com/author/Samuel_Taylor_Coleridge/The_Rime_Of_The_Ancient_Mariner_Part_5.html https://www.litscape.com/author/Samuel_Taylor_Coleridge/The_...

trehalose 7y ago

I'm extremely skeptical of the study you linked about magnetic alignment and sleep latency. Just looking at table 6 (the only table related to the only association stated significant), the stats for South-North sleepers look noticeably better than the stats for North-South sleepers. I'm no statistician, but just look at it. The South-North sleepers sample, versus the North-South (supposedly best) sleepers, has proportionately three times more people experiencing zero days weekly of difficulty getting to sleep, two-thirds as many people having even one day of difficulty, two-thirds as many people having two days of difficulty... and 50% more people having three days of difficulty, but even then, we're talking only four people each among a group of 47 vs a group of 35. Again, I'm no statistician, but does that last and smallest column overshadow the three much bigger columns with the opposite trend, to the point of being a 1 in 1000 result assuming the null hypothesis? Furthermore, the sleep measures were self-reported, through the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Inventory (PSQI), which I quote: >In Iran, Tehran psychiatry institute assessed the validity and reliability of the Farsi version of this questionnaire with 89.6% for sensitivity and 86.5% for specificity. Did the math behind this eye-catching <0.001 p-value take into account that the questionnaire used was measured to have a 10.4% false negative rate and a 13.5% false positive rate? I find it hard to believe. But I'd love to see a statistician who actually knows how to interpret these numbers tell me that I'm wrong.