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

That's interesting, but when reading the book my takeaways weren't really whether some cancer risks doubles or so.

They were

* what are REM/NREM, light and deep NREM sleep for?

* some fascinating study about lucid dreaming

* effects of coffein and sleep medication

* sleep hygiene tips

* some other things I can't recall right now

Yes, you can read about these things elsewhere, too, but I still think the book is a tremendous introduction to the subject.

But I don't have an academic interest in the subject, so the criticisms in the article do not matter much to me (except for some uneasy feeling about accuracy in general). If you're a student of medicine, cognitive sciences or whatever, you should probably get your introduction elsewhere anyway.

Thank you for this.

I am very disappointed in Matthew Walker. In fact, if I were working in the same field as him, these findings would cast a doubt on most of his other work. The density of the errors almost makes me unsure which is worse: the errors are unintentional due to carelessness or they are deliberate to create a better sounding story. (Of course, the latter is worse as it is basically academic fraud.)

I believe there should be more books that are scientifically sound, yet accessible to most people. I thought this was one such book, but alas.

Thank you! I was turned off even earlier by the glaring 'post hoc ergo propter hoc' logic error on the very first page of the text.

Quoting from the second paragraph, following a load of claims of the maladies that come from lack of sleep:

"Fitting Charlotte Bronte's prophetic wisdom that a 'ruffled mind makes a restless pillow', sleep disruption further contributes to all major psychiatric conditions..."

It is plain that Charlotte Bronte was inferring psychiatric conditions lead to sleep disruption, not the other way around.

This sparks an idea... what if there was a tool that crawled all academic studies’ sources. Basically allowing you to see the root source of every cited study back to square one. Would make it much easier to discover studies based on a pyramid of weaker/wrong studies.

Thanks for this.

'Why we Sleep' was one of the books I was reading before reading your analysis, and you saved me from wasting any more time on that obviously inaccurate load of hyperbole.

More importantly, you saved me from wasting even more time trying to apply any of the advice by what seems to be sensationalism passing off as science (and maybe even jeopardising my health in the process).

Even after reading the article, I still believe, in general, more sleep is better for you. I'll continue to strive for 8 hours a night. I would still assume the majority of Americans aren't getting enough sleep.

Maybe this does help the feelings of "If I don't get enough sleep I am going to die young" that some may come away with after reading the book. Overall, I'd still recommend the book.

Also, who is "Big Sleep" that is mentioned at the end of the article? Mattress companies?

Would like to see the author’s rebuttal, if he does decide to rebut.

The article before this one tho: https://guzey.com/fiction/hntop1

> No, not every living creature generates a circadian rhythm

> This is false. Brewer’s yeast (S. cerevisiae)

I don’t think most people would consider yeast a “creature“

Taken in light of the existence of the glymphatic system, a robust mechanism of clearance activated by slow wave sleep, what is more likely... misfolded protein accumulation is incidental to the loss of sleep during the course of fatal familial insomnia or loss of sleep is incidental to what is actually a disease of misfolded proteins?

That's a lot of errors, and he only examined Chapter 1 of "Why we Sleep".

Walker comes out looking like a charlatan.

Thank you for this. I've been skeptical about Matthew since his association with Hello, the failed sleep gadget startup. This really drives home what a salesman he is. Id like to think there will be consequences...but I doubt it.

Thank you for taking the time to put this together. I am curious to see if Matthew Walker replies.

Thank you so much for this article!

I usually have a lot of trouble sleeping and was panicking after I read the book. The side effects of not sleeping did seem kind of exaggerated, but glad to know someone actually took the time to corroborate all the claims.

Thank you Alexey for this great article. I was actually in the process of reading the book.

I would be very interested in an analysis of the scientific and factual accuracies in the rest of the book.

The faux disclaimer at the start that “discourages” using SciHub to access the paywalled articles was a nice touch to an otherwise excellent read

> Walker’s book has likely wasted thousands of hours of life and worsened the health of people who read it

How has it worsened the health of people?

Thank you for this public service! I feel duped now after reading 1/3 of the book.

Wow.....super disappointed to say the least. I actually bought the audiobook the other month and was looking to listening to it. I really enjoyed his episode on Joe Rogan and was the only one I've ever listened to twice. I don't understand why he would make up facts like fabricating statements from WHO? These are amateur mistakes a smart man doesn't make, which I'm sure Walker is (?). I haven't even finished reading this article but this part stood out:

"Walker’s book has likely wasted thousands of hours of life and worsened the health of people who read it and took its recommendations at face value."

First part is dubious but second part, seriously? How can extra of sleep "worsen" the health of people?