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Comment by richthegeek | Hacker News Reader

The summary of this, which was surprisingly difficult to distill, is that low light levels induces myopia.

Or more specifically, elevated light levels causes a dopamine release which prevents myopia.

Not sure why the article needed to spend the first 2000 words not just saying that.

Because this is still a new, and somewhat controversial idea, and the article spent a lot of time considering the alternatives and explaining why their proposed idea seemed to fit the data best. Without it there would be no reason to take their idea as more credible.

Now I dislike pointlessly long articles, and certainly this article could have used with an abstract to put forward the main thesis before delving into alternatives, but I don't think your criticism is entirely fair. It certainly didn't fit the pattern of the really long articles where the writer invariably talks about their childhood or some other barely relevant events before actually talking about the issue at hand.

Haha no. If the article was written to be maximally useful then it would have mentioned the conclusion in the first two sentences rather than buried somewhere near the end. Clearly the incentives of the writer and magazine are not aligned with those of the reader.

Oh boy. Go on scholar.google.com and search for "lens-induced myopia", "axial elongation eyeball", "near induced transient myopia", "pseudo myopia". How myopia happens has already been figured out, hundreds of times over, over the past 4 decades. It's in the major ophthalmology journals at least a few times a year. Researching what caused myopia, low light, just plain silly in 2015. ;-)

Could you give a short summary? Thanks!

I wonder if there's a way to reverse myopia though, apart from laser-eye-cutting surgery.

See gettingstronger.org, frauenfeldclinic.com, myopia.org, etc. Absolutely reversible. No economic benefit. How is it going to be popular if there's nothing to sell? :) Pills, more pills, that's how most non-acute conditions are dealt with.

some of those look pretty scammy, and no offence but you made an account 5 hours ago. Any "real" stuff out there?

Heh. Yea no offense taken. I made the account specifically to comment on this topic.

Myopia.org is not pretty, but scammy, I dunno. And gettingstronger.org, look around there. It's not even a site about myopia, but he has some very relevant insights. Forum with a zillion posts discussing the topic. Also he sells nothing on there. So where's the scam potential? And Frauenfeld on "about myopia" has a ton of clinical research references. There is a giant PDF on that page with just about everything worth knowing about myopia.

If it matters most what the sites "look" like, sure. Not Apple.com, no quick fix answers. This topic does require some reading to find meaningful insights.

myopia.org: first impressions, timecube. Second impressions: wait, myopia isn't inherited? There are 18 loci on 15 chromosomes that are associated with myopia. Carriers of these genes are 10x as likely to have myopia. Bullshit meter for the site is off the scale. Does the same person who writes that site write homeopathic guides? Wait, let's see what else is linked to. Oh, some bullshit cholesterol pills! And on all cholesterol products, "We are currently not supplying this item due to quality issues at the supplier's factory."

And cataract drops! "Carnosine (β-alanyl-L-hystidine), and its topical prodrug formulation N-acetylcarnosine (NAC), is advertised (especially on the internet) to treat a range of ophthalmic disorders associated with oxidative stress, including age-related and diabetic cataracts. No convincing animal studies or masked clinical trials have been reported"

This dude is a snakeoil salesman. The myopia.org site is just the bait.

gettingstronger.org: it has some, hm, interesting opinions that's for sure. He's a chemical engineer and philosopher, though, so not .. quite .. sure about his clinical expertise, especially with regard to myopia. No ads, not selling anything (on the surface) except his slightly-out-there ideas.

Frauenfeld Clinic: with clinic in the name, you immediately think it's run by a doctor -- right? Welllllll.... it was launched seven years ago by a "holistic ophthalmology practitioner" that signs his posts only with "Alex;" The current curator is "Jake Steiner," who claims to have fixed his own myopia with "this amazing program." His training in the area is self proclaimed as, "[...] tak[ing] dozens of classes in ophthalmology, stud[ying] optometry, and read[ing] tens of thousands of pages of myopia studies" His consults start at $10k.

Yeah, dude, you're propagating snake oil :)

At least you looked at it. :)

Did you read the PDF with a whole lot of the interesting research on the subject? Pretty brilliant stuff there, and not related to selling of anything. Can't comment on Steiner consults, didn't see any way to actually buy or pay - looked to me more like a way to say "go ask somebody else", if I remember.

Also gettingstronger isn't very much out there on the myopia topic at all. Check out scholar.google.com and just type in the keywords that Todd talks about. That's some pretty established premises, that hardly anybody is arguing against.

My point was to suggest some ways to work out the myopia problem. I for one used to depend on -3.00 glasses that I haven't needed in a few years, thanks to the ideas on those and other sites like it. It is fascinating how often it's more about being right, than looking into options (which can't really point at you there, you clearly looked at the sites). Pseudo myopia, near-induced transient myopia, lens-induced myopia, those are all very key pieces to the puzzle. The concept of the "dynamic eye", which changes specifically based on sight and focal plane, is another.

Put it all together, and you aren't necessarily stuck with glasses forever. :)

>There are 18 loci on 15 chromosomes that are associated with myopia. Carriers of these genes are 10x as likely to have myopia.

That is pathological myopia. Most myopia is not pathological myopia and is not inherited. (did you even read the article?) The site is bullshit, but so is your comment.

Not all cases of myopia are caused by misshapen eyeballs. There are a few other conditions which can cause nearsightedness. Some will correct on its own, others can be corrected by some eye exercises. This would explain why some people have success with these methods.

However, if myopia is caused by misshapen eyeballs (the usual cause), then none of those exercises have been observed to be effective in any way.

And don't use argument of no economic benefit. There is always something to sell. See the middle link you have posted which is selling a $150/mo subscription to "reverse myopia"

Yes, there is. Get heavy curtains and let your eyes fully adapt to the dark every evening before you go to sleep.

Which is funny, because modern humans live with a longer period of (artificial light) exposure

So it's not "more light" but "more intense light"

And don't forget the sunscreen

Mentioned in the article, too: Sitting in the shadow with sunglasses on a sunny day: >10000 lux, typical indoor/office: 500 lux. So, while much brighter than a candle, this can not be compared at all to sunlight.

Journalists are paid by the word. There is no incentive for being brief (and not wasting the time of the reader)

TS;DGP (too short; didn't get paid)

Is this actually true? It's pretty hard to believe, I honestly feel like you pulled it out of your ass, but it's also possible I'm totally out of touch.

This article is a "feature" (not entirely sure what that implies) in a scientific journal (targeted towards a relatively general audience, compared to other scientific journals). Is this particular publication, or this type of publication, known to pay by the word?

Which other publications pay by the word?

Is it more common in some areas of publication than others?

How could such an incentive-perverting mechanism not have died off by now?

Do any companies still pay/evaluate their developers by lines of code written?

I used to work in newspapers and it's still pretty common in that industry. But they also usually give you a word count to hit, so it's not like you can just write yourself a Mercedes.

In my experience, big sites that crank out short articles like the Atlantic online, Slate, and Vice pay a set rate per piece, but longer-form outlets like Aeon and Nautilus pay per word. I've never written for a print-only magazine but I've heard that they still pay per word by and large. And I should add, the academic journals I've written for pay nothing at all!

I was paid for the word once and let me tell you, if they said 1500-2000 words, you can guess which end of the range I took.

But that situation was very rare and in the other five or six jobs I've had in the journalism world, it hasn't been the case. And in fact journalistic style is to pack as much into the first sentence as you can. This is a long, analytical feature piece by a major journal's news department. If you want the brief version, find a rewrite by AP or a blog.

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