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Sleep experts who have education in the area and study for a living seem to overwhelmingly disagree with what you're saying. There is extensive discussion of th

Sleep experts who have education in the area and study for a living seem to overwhelmingly disagree with what you're saying. There is extensive discussion of the issues in the linked article, with inline links to sources.

dahart 6y ago
Half of the “sleep experts” you’re referring to are the group known as SRBR. Their position paper comes up every time Daylight Savings is discussed on Hacker News. About a year ago, I was curious and read the position paper and followed up on a bunch of the references in the paper, reading the sources too. I found pretty conclusive evidence of exactly what @strbean said: the “evidence” here is using scientific data about other health problems and just assuming that they apply to DST. I don’t know if they’re wrong or right, but they are absolutely overstating their claims. This group has an agenda, and they have allowed their agenda to compromise their scientific integrity. In fact, reading the sources of SRBR’s position paper is where I learned about “social jet lag”. One of the first citations in the paper talks about how severe social jet lag (time changes by more than 2 hours per week) is associated with higher rates of diabetes. The SRBR paper cites this as conclusive evidence that the DST time change is harmful, without discussion. A single populist news article referencing people with an agenda does not amount to overwhelming consensus, so don’t get suckered by people who’s argument sounds good to you, it may be specious. Note that several of the papers in the article are written by overlapping authors. This article gave you a lot of scientific sounding links to read, but the number of groups it represents is smaller than the number of links, the links are not all independent bits of evidence. Please don’t take my word for it, please go through the same exercise I did and follow up on SRBR’s references and ask yourself the same question - do their citations support the claims they are making? Maybe you’ll come to a different conclusion, but it looks clear to me that people are painting a picture of scientific authority to support a strong conclusion that the research does not actually back up with data. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24314134 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24314134 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24951983 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24951983
- Philadelphia 6y ago
  What sort of agenda are you accusing the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms, which appears to be a well-regarded professional organization that publishes a high-impact academic journal, of having?
  - dahart 6y ago
    It's not my opinion or an accusation that they have an agenda to show DST is bad, they have published this fact. You can read their "talking points" here: https://srbr.org/advocacy/daylight-saving-time-presskit/ https://srbr.org/advocacy/daylight-saving-time-presskit/ The problem is not the existence of an agenda, the problem is that the agenda is too strong and is being allowed to cloud the science. It looks to me like the authors of the position paper have decided (and stated) that DST time changes are bad, ahead of the evidence that justifies this position. It appears that the certainty of their claims in the position paper is much higher than the evidence they cite can actually support. My claim here is easily verifiable, please just go read some of the sources they cite in the position paper, and verify for yourself whether the citation is warranted and whether it really backs up the claims that are being made in the context of the citation. I have provided some specific citations that I have trouble with in the HN links above. It's not necessary to inspect those specifically, but I offer them as easy things you could check in just a few minutes of followup work.

dahart 6y ago

Half of the “sleep experts” you’re referring to are the group known as SRBR. Their position paper comes up every time Daylight Savings is discussed on Hacker News. About a year ago, I was curious and read the position paper and followed up on a bunch of the references in the paper, reading the sources too. I found pretty conclusive evidence of exactly what @strbean said: the “evidence” here is using scientific data about other health problems and just assuming that they apply to DST. I don’t know if they’re wrong or right, but they are absolutely overstating their claims. This group has an agenda, and they have allowed their agenda to compromise their scientific integrity. In fact, reading the sources of SRBR’s position paper is where I learned about “social jet lag”. One of the first citations in the paper talks about how severe social jet lag (time changes by more than 2 hours per week) is associated with higher rates of diabetes. The SRBR paper cites this as conclusive evidence that the DST time change is harmful, without discussion. A single populist news article referencing people with an agenda does not amount to overwhelming consensus, so don’t get suckered by people who’s argument sounds good to you, it may be specious. Note that several of the papers in the article are written by overlapping authors. This article gave you a lot of scientific sounding links to read, but the number of groups it represents is smaller than the number of links, the links are not all independent bits of evidence. Please don’t take my word for it, please go through the same exercise I did and follow up on SRBR’s references and ask yourself the same question - do their citations support the claims they are making? Maybe you’ll come to a different conclusion, but it looks clear to me that people are painting a picture of scientific authority to support a strong conclusion that the research does not actually back up with data. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24314134 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24314134 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24951983 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24951983

Philadelphia 6y ago
What sort of agenda are you accusing the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms, which appears to be a well-regarded professional organization that publishes a high-impact academic journal, of having?
- dahart 6y ago
  It's not my opinion or an accusation that they have an agenda to show DST is bad, they have published this fact. You can read their "talking points" here: https://srbr.org/advocacy/daylight-saving-time-presskit/ https://srbr.org/advocacy/daylight-saving-time-presskit/ The problem is not the existence of an agenda, the problem is that the agenda is too strong and is being allowed to cloud the science. It looks to me like the authors of the position paper have decided (and stated) that DST time changes are bad, ahead of the evidence that justifies this position. It appears that the certainty of their claims in the position paper is much higher than the evidence they cite can actually support. My claim here is easily verifiable, please just go read some of the sources they cite in the position paper, and verify for yourself whether the citation is warranted and whether it really backs up the claims that are being made in the context of the citation. I have provided some specific citations that I have trouble with in the HN links above. It's not necessary to inspect those specifically, but I offer them as easy things you could check in just a few minutes of followup work.