4 ms·

“Why We Sleep” Is Riddled with Scientific and Factual Errors

raz32dust 7y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21546850 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21546850
- AuthorizedCust 7y ago
  While true, it appears to have been extensively edited and added to since then.
  - Fnoord 7y ago
    Do you have a changelog?
    - AuthorizedCust 7y ago
      Only informal. The author mentions extensive time spent on this since original publication, mentions questions he's responded to or sought more advice on since publication, and I noticed that that last-updated date, near the top, changes from 2-25 to 2-26. It seems to be actively maintained. While I understand HN's preference for no duplicate posts, this seems to have evolved significantly since original posting.
knzhou 7y ago
I've seen this posted all over the internet to great acclaim, and honestly, it just feels feverish and desperate to me, grasping at tiny points as if they refute the central thesis. For example, the point that you linked to says that the official recommendations on sleep are "7 to 9 hours", which Walker simplified to "an average of 8 hours". I don't see how this simplification is so bad. The point is that these numbers are all much higher than the 5-6 hours many people claim to subsist on. It doesn't even change the numbers that much: slightly more than half of people sleep less than 8 hours, and slightly less than half of people sleep less than 7 hours. This nitpick does not refute the central point that having 5-6 hours of sleep generally impairs you, it only takes aim at phrasing. I find point #2 (of 5) in this article especially laughable. Here it's claimed that sleep deprivation is actually a good thing, because it can be used as a temporary treatment for severe depression. Under this logic, bulimia is a healthy habit because you should induce vomiting after being poisoned.
- AuthorizedCust 7y ago
  Oops, I didn't mean to link to an anchor! I don't see a way for me to fix that. Apologies.
- AuthorizedCust 7y ago
  Also, I didn't read his point 2 as saying sleep deprivation is good. I see it as refuting the idea that not having "enough" sleep absolutely bad.
  - knzhou 7y ago
    Respectfully, who cares? In biology, nothing is an absolute. All good things have bad sides and all bad things have good sides, and that shouldn't stop us from identifying things that are generally good. Nobody giving general advice can or should be expected to cover every edge case.
    - sleepthrowaway6 7y ago
      Disrespectfully, for someone that harps on about the main thesis, you fail to ascertain the blog author's main point: Matt Walker is lacking integrity. Despite his Ivy League status, despite his PhD and numerous accomplishments, and despite all his prestige and educational attainment, he's still a high-quality conman. That's the point. He twisted facts to sell a book and abused his position of authority to mislead others for money.
  - belltaco 7y ago
    It only applies as a temporary treatment for a small subset of people with a severe condition.
- xmprt 7y ago
  Your comparison of bulimia to sleep deprivation makes no sense. Bulimia might actually be a worthwhile cure to research if people often got poisoned without realizing it and this poisoning was a problem that affected them everyday.
- 7y ago
xmprt 7y ago
Not sure why this links to section 5 but the entire page is worth reading. It a little ironic to say that this article changed my perspective on sleeping (considering this article is showing how you shouldn't believe the first thing you read) but given how little research I had done prior, I think I at least know now that there's a lot more that I don't know.
- AuthorizedCust 7y ago
  I accidentally kept an anchor in the URL. My apologies!
pastor_williams 7y ago
The author of "Why We Sleep" has written a blog post responding to the OP article and other questions from readers: https://sleepdiplomat.wordpress.com/2019/12/19/why-we-sleep-responses-to-questions-from-readers/ https://sleepdiplomat.wordpress.com/2019/12/19/why-we-sleep-...
- Ono-Sendai 7y ago
  Random quote from the above: "The book’s misattribution of the CDC statement to the WHO will be corrected in the next edition. "
  - guzey 7y ago
    Walker said this in [1] and I believe that this position is indefensible At the time at the time of the book’s publication in 2017 (and today), CDC had no documents and no pages on its site that would declare a sleep loss epidemic. As I noted in section Possible origin of the “sleeplessness epidemic” thing [2], >Between late 2010/early 2011 and August/September 2015 [3-6], CDC had a page on its site titled “Insufficient Sleep Is a Public Health Epidemic”. More than 2 years before Why We Sleep was published, the page changed the word “epidemic” to “problem”, so that its title became “Insufficient Sleep Is a Public Health Problem”. … the fact that CDC itself changed the wording from “epidemic” to “problem” more than 2 years prior to the book’s publication, indicat[es] that they no longer believed in the presence of an “insufficient sleep epidemic” Issuing a correction that would just change “WHO” to “CDC” in the next edition of the book – as Walker suggested – is deceptive. The CDC long ago (more than 4 years ago) removed the word “epidemic” from the article, and then removed the article itself. If Walker believes that that is sufficient to state that CDC has declared a sleep loss epidemic, he might as well say that CDC has declared an epidemic of inhalation anthrax (and forget to note that it was declared in 1958 [3]) Also, Walker never explains why the source for this sleep loss epidemic claim in the book is a random National Geographic documentary. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csz3s6 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csz3s6 [2] https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/#possible-origin-of-the-sleeplessness-epidemic-thing https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/#possible-origin-of-the...) [3] https://perma.cc/72CZ-L9DG https://perma.cc/72CZ-L9DG [4] [https://perma.cc/23UM-849W https://perma.cc/23UM-849W [5] [https://perma.cc/2E68-ZRL9 https://perma.cc/2E68-ZRL9 [6] [https://perma.cc/UJ4W-JHNY https://perma.cc/UJ4W-JHNY [7] https://www.cdc.gov/museum/timeline/1940-1970.html https://www.cdc.gov/museum/timeline/1940-1970.html
btrettel 7y ago
While I can't speak to the accuracy of the book criticized, science in general is riddled with similar problems. Follow the citation trail and you'll often find that a cited article doesn't say what was claimed or says something similar but not quite the same. Alternatively, you might see that the cited article does say what is claimed, but the evidence is weak. When researchers talk about all of the "low hanging fruit" being taken, it seems to me that they're blind to all the nonsense that appears once you start following the citation trail. Maybe every topic has been touched, but even something that seems definitive in a review article could have major flaws when examined more closely. I'm almost done a PhD in engineering, and this has been my experience at least. I try to "debunk" something in roughly half my publications now. Edit: I don't mean to suggest that identifying many of these problems is easy, just that it's not done frequently enough. For example, if you're doing research in a particular field, you're probably basing it partly on previous review articles. Take a look at some primary sources in addition to that. This applies extra if you're writing a review article. Don't just mirror what some previous review articles say and cite some newer papers. Find some old but good papers that were missed by previous reviews. Check primary sources. Etc. This is the job of a someone writing a review in my view.
- sleepthrowaway6 7y ago
  It's also quite jarring to come across a paper on a niche topic (e.g a specific hormone's effects on certain biological processes), that completely botches simple, fundamental and accepted facts in your field; facts that the main thesis relies on. It's absolutely silly and I find myself finding little of use in the author's conclusions, or their observations. After spending way too much time parsing through endless research papers, the only things I pay attention anymore are methodology and data. This tells me: is the data relevant to my work? And was the data collected "properly" (I swear, half the time the researchers half-ass methodology that the results are fairly worthless)
  - btrettel 7y ago
    > the only things I pay attention anymore are methodology and data. > This tells me: is the data relevant to my work? And was the data collected "properly" (I swear, half the time the researchers half-ass methodology that the results are fairly worthless) I've come to the same conclusion, and I'm a theorist myself. Theory is hit or miss, mostly miss. I still read it just to find the nugget of truth if there is one. If the data is relevant and was collected properly then it can be a goldmine, regardless of the theoretical explanation given by the researchers. But often the researchers measure the wrong thing, or measure the right thing in the wrong conditions or with some other problem. (One major problem I've found is that the uncertainties on many measurements in my field are enormous, but don't need to be, and very few seems to have noticed or cared.)
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
kneel 7y ago
>I have many stories of people who slept well on less than eight hours of sleep, read Walker’s book, tried to get more sleep and this led to more time awake, frustration, worry, sleep-related anxiety, and insomnia. This is me. I get at most 7 hours, usually 6. I only feel impaired if I drop down to 4. Reading about Matthew Walker's research years ago caused much anxiety and a loss of sleep, how ironic.
fireattack 7y ago
Some of the points feel a little bit pedantic (or even semantic?).
fossuser 7y ago
I got a strong motivated reasoning/bullshit vibe from Walker in this interview: https://www.npr.org/2018/07/20/630792401/sleep-scientist-warns-against-walking-through-life-in-an-underslept-state https://www.npr.org/2018/07/20/630792401/sleep-scientist-war... Particularly this section: > “Sleep is not like the bank. So you can't accumulate debt and then try and pay it off at a later point in time. And the reason is this - we know that if I were to deprive you of sleep for an entire night - take away eight hours - and then in the subsequent nights, I give you all of the sleep that you want - however much you wish to consume - you never get back all that you lost. You will sleep longer, but you will never achieve that full eight-hour repayment as it were. So the brain has no capacity to get back that lost sleep...” I don’t think this follows - seems likely to me that sleep is not some linear time thing and that there’s a standard overhead that doesn’t need to be repeated to extend and make up the time. This feels like a symptom of not understanding the mechanism and making a bad assumption. I also found the “I won’t mention the cognitive failures I can detect” irritating. If there’s some actual thing to mention, say it - this kind of thing sets off alarms for me. It doesn’t surprise me that the rest is similarly bad, I’m glad someone dug into it.
- aSplash0fDerp 7y ago
  Not to choose a side, but sleep deprivation can be related to running an engine with low oil or running it while overheating. Extreme exhaustion is usually a chemically imbalanced period. If we see 6 hour workdays become the norm during the automation boom, we may see that shifting to 12 hour business days with a well rested workforce was the only way to keep up with the next wave of innovation while keeping 1st world working conditions. Would you invest an extra 2 hours a day to your sleep?

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21546850 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21546850

AuthorizedCust 7y ago
While true, it appears to have been extensively edited and added to since then.
- Fnoord 7y ago
  Do you have a changelog?
  - AuthorizedCust 7y ago
    Only informal. The author mentions extensive time spent on this since original publication, mentions questions he's responded to or sought more advice on since publication, and I noticed that that last-updated date, near the top, changes from 2-25 to 2-26. It seems to be actively maintained. While I understand HN's preference for no duplicate posts, this seems to have evolved significantly since original posting.

I've seen this posted all over the internet to great acclaim, and honestly, it just feels feverish and desperate to me, grasping at tiny points as if they refute the central thesis. For example, the point that you linked to says that the official recommendations on sleep are "7 to 9 hours", which Walker simplified to "an average of 8 hours". I don't see how this simplification is so bad. The point is that these numbers are all much higher than the 5-6 hours many people claim to subsist on. It doesn't even change the numbers that much: slightly more than half of people sleep less than 8 hours, and slightly less than half of people sleep less than 7 hours. This nitpick does not refute the central point that having 5-6 hours of sleep generally impairs you, it only takes aim at phrasing. I find point #2 (of 5) in this article especially laughable. Here it's claimed that sleep deprivation is actually a good thing, because it can be used as a temporary treatment for severe depression. Under this logic, bulimia is a healthy habit because you should induce vomiting after being poisoned.

AuthorizedCust 7y ago
Oops, I didn't mean to link to an anchor! I don't see a way for me to fix that. Apologies.
AuthorizedCust 7y ago
Also, I didn't read his point 2 as saying sleep deprivation is good. I see it as refuting the idea that not having "enough" sleep absolutely bad.
- knzhou 7y ago
  Respectfully, who cares? In biology, nothing is an absolute. All good things have bad sides and all bad things have good sides, and that shouldn't stop us from identifying things that are generally good. Nobody giving general advice can or should be expected to cover every edge case.
  - sleepthrowaway6 7y ago
    Disrespectfully, for someone that harps on about the main thesis, you fail to ascertain the blog author's main point: Matt Walker is lacking integrity. Despite his Ivy League status, despite his PhD and numerous accomplishments, and despite all his prestige and educational attainment, he's still a high-quality conman. That's the point. He twisted facts to sell a book and abused his position of authority to mislead others for money.
- belltaco 7y ago
  It only applies as a temporary treatment for a small subset of people with a severe condition.
xmprt 7y ago
Your comparison of bulimia to sleep deprivation makes no sense. Bulimia might actually be a worthwhile cure to research if people often got poisoned without realizing it and this poisoning was a problem that affected them everyday.
7y ago

xmprt 7y ago

Not sure why this links to section 5 but the entire page is worth reading. It a little ironic to say that this article changed my perspective on sleeping (considering this article is showing how you shouldn't believe the first thing you read) but given how little research I had done prior, I think I at least know now that there's a lot more that I don't know.

AuthorizedCust 7y ago
I accidentally kept an anchor in the URL. My apologies!

pastor_williams 7y ago

The author of "Why We Sleep" has written a blog post responding to the OP article and other questions from readers: https://sleepdiplomat.wordpress.com/2019/12/19/why-we-sleep-responses-to-questions-from-readers/ https://sleepdiplomat.wordpress.com/2019/12/19/why-we-sleep-...

Ono-Sendai 7y ago
Random quote from the above: "The book’s misattribution of the CDC statement to the WHO will be corrected in the next edition. "
- guzey 7y ago
  Walker said this in [1] and I believe that this position is indefensible At the time at the time of the book’s publication in 2017 (and today), CDC had no documents and no pages on its site that would declare a sleep loss epidemic. As I noted in section Possible origin of the “sleeplessness epidemic” thing [2], >Between late 2010/early 2011 and August/September 2015 [3-6], CDC had a page on its site titled “Insufficient Sleep Is a Public Health Epidemic”. More than 2 years before Why We Sleep was published, the page changed the word “epidemic” to “problem”, so that its title became “Insufficient Sleep Is a Public Health Problem”. … the fact that CDC itself changed the wording from “epidemic” to “problem” more than 2 years prior to the book’s publication, indicat[es] that they no longer believed in the presence of an “insufficient sleep epidemic” Issuing a correction that would just change “WHO” to “CDC” in the next edition of the book – as Walker suggested – is deceptive. The CDC long ago (more than 4 years ago) removed the word “epidemic” from the article, and then removed the article itself. If Walker believes that that is sufficient to state that CDC has declared a sleep loss epidemic, he might as well say that CDC has declared an epidemic of inhalation anthrax (and forget to note that it was declared in 1958 [3]) Also, Walker never explains why the source for this sleep loss epidemic claim in the book is a random National Geographic documentary. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csz3s6 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csz3s6 [2] https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/#possible-origin-of-the-sleeplessness-epidemic-thing https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/#possible-origin-of-the...) [3] https://perma.cc/72CZ-L9DG https://perma.cc/72CZ-L9DG [4] [https://perma.cc/23UM-849W https://perma.cc/23UM-849W [5] [https://perma.cc/2E68-ZRL9 https://perma.cc/2E68-ZRL9 [6] [https://perma.cc/UJ4W-JHNY https://perma.cc/UJ4W-JHNY [7] https://www.cdc.gov/museum/timeline/1940-1970.html https://www.cdc.gov/museum/timeline/1940-1970.html

btrettel 7y ago

While I can't speak to the accuracy of the book criticized, science in general is riddled with similar problems. Follow the citation trail and you'll often find that a cited article doesn't say what was claimed or says something similar but not quite the same. Alternatively, you might see that the cited article does say what is claimed, but the evidence is weak. When researchers talk about all of the "low hanging fruit" being taken, it seems to me that they're blind to all the nonsense that appears once you start following the citation trail. Maybe every topic has been touched, but even something that seems definitive in a review article could have major flaws when examined more closely. I'm almost done a PhD in engineering, and this has been my experience at least. I try to "debunk" something in roughly half my publications now. Edit: I don't mean to suggest that identifying many of these problems is easy, just that it's not done frequently enough. For example, if you're doing research in a particular field, you're probably basing it partly on previous review articles. Take a look at some primary sources in addition to that. This applies extra if you're writing a review article. Don't just mirror what some previous review articles say and cite some newer papers. Find some old but good papers that were missed by previous reviews. Check primary sources. Etc. This is the job of a someone writing a review in my view.

sleepthrowaway6 7y ago
It's also quite jarring to come across a paper on a niche topic (e.g a specific hormone's effects on certain biological processes), that completely botches simple, fundamental and accepted facts in your field; facts that the main thesis relies on. It's absolutely silly and I find myself finding little of use in the author's conclusions, or their observations. After spending way too much time parsing through endless research papers, the only things I pay attention anymore are methodology and data. This tells me: is the data relevant to my work? And was the data collected "properly" (I swear, half the time the researchers half-ass methodology that the results are fairly worthless)
- btrettel 7y ago
  > the only things I pay attention anymore are methodology and data. > This tells me: is the data relevant to my work? And was the data collected "properly" (I swear, half the time the researchers half-ass methodology that the results are fairly worthless) I've come to the same conclusion, and I'm a theorist myself. Theory is hit or miss, mostly miss. I still read it just to find the nugget of truth if there is one. If the data is relevant and was collected properly then it can be a goldmine, regardless of the theoretical explanation given by the researchers. But often the researchers measure the wrong thing, or measure the right thing in the wrong conditions or with some other problem. (One major problem I've found is that the uncertainties on many measurements in my field are enormous, but don't need to be, and very few seems to have noticed or cared.)

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

kneel 7y ago

>I have many stories of people who slept well on less than eight hours of sleep, read Walker’s book, tried to get more sleep and this led to more time awake, frustration, worry, sleep-related anxiety, and insomnia. This is me. I get at most 7 hours, usually 6. I only feel impaired if I drop down to 4. Reading about Matthew Walker's research years ago caused much anxiety and a loss of sleep, how ironic.

fireattack 7y ago

Some of the points feel a little bit pedantic (or even semantic?).

fossuser 7y ago

I got a strong motivated reasoning/bullshit vibe from Walker in this interview: https://www.npr.org/2018/07/20/630792401/sleep-scientist-warns-against-walking-through-life-in-an-underslept-state https://www.npr.org/2018/07/20/630792401/sleep-scientist-war... Particularly this section: > “Sleep is not like the bank. So you can't accumulate debt and then try and pay it off at a later point in time. And the reason is this - we know that if I were to deprive you of sleep for an entire night - take away eight hours - and then in the subsequent nights, I give you all of the sleep that you want - however much you wish to consume - you never get back all that you lost. You will sleep longer, but you will never achieve that full eight-hour repayment as it were. So the brain has no capacity to get back that lost sleep...” I don’t think this follows - seems likely to me that sleep is not some linear time thing and that there’s a standard overhead that doesn’t need to be repeated to extend and make up the time. This feels like a symptom of not understanding the mechanism and making a bad assumption. I also found the “I won’t mention the cognitive failures I can detect” irritating. If there’s some actual thing to mention, say it - this kind of thing sets off alarms for me. It doesn’t surprise me that the rest is similarly bad, I’m glad someone dug into it.

aSplash0fDerp 7y ago
Not to choose a side, but sleep deprivation can be related to running an engine with low oil or running it while overheating. Extreme exhaustion is usually a chemically imbalanced period. If we see 6 hour workdays become the norm during the automation boom, we may see that shifting to 12 hour business days with a well rested workforce was the only way to keep up with the next wave of innovation while keeping 1st world working conditions. Would you invest an extra 2 hours a day to your sleep?