- Why we sleep literally calls out the example of treating depression with sleep deprivation.
- The cancer reference was made with the context of “consistently less than 5 hours of sleep”, he then referenced many studies that assessed 4 hour sleeps. This essay misrepresents the context of that chapter.
- As counter evidence throughout he references research done AFTER the book was written...
There is something about the Why We Sleep controversy that is uniquely frustrating to me, having dealt with sleep problems for years. If I hadn't read HN then I probably would have read that book for far longer than I did. What about the people that might not read HN and still aren't aware of the tangible harms it can cause? It currently has a 4.4 out of 5 on Goodreads and pages of written five-star reviews, proving the utter uselessness of such a metric for topics like health.
It seems the solution is research from a variety of different sources. That worked pretty well for actually sorting out my sleep issues, because I was more careful. But the thing is, time is finite. In the programming realm we can't always do the same militant validation for the thousands of microdependencies a single npm project can pull in. The amount of available information is exploding, and much of it is becoming obsoleted constantly. There has to be a line drawn somewhere. And when we decide to trust the creator as being an "expert" as a compromise, we will inevitably encounter sources like these.
It's not that the first-order advice of "avoid blue light in the evening" is necessarily bad. Rather, telling people (in no uncertain terms) that if they do <x> they are hurting themselves and that they must change what they do, may cause second-order problems. This is one of the reasons why you should not get medical advice from the internet or pop science books.
(FWIW, I have read the book, before learning of the scientific critiques. I must agree that the presentation of the book is usually much stronger than what the data presented admits. It's not that the small-scale studies in question seem particularly flawed or that the interpretations are downright unreasonable, but I think it's borderline unscientific to present as fact a story woven from more or less isolated data points in the form of individual studies.)
Also, I’d like to actually understand the inaccuracy... it seems the real problem is he “emphasised” some things. That’s hardly inaccurate.
Curious also why this isn’t published in a journal, and be peer refereed... or has it? That is the standard required for a “takedown”.
Edit: Or at least allow a right of reply from the author. Having just read the book you have intentionally misrepresented a number of (perhaps even all) points. I can only think you are trying to generate controversy to build your own profile.