[HN Gopher] "Why We Sleep" is riddled with scientific and factua...
___________________________________________________________________
"Why We Sleep" is riddled with scientific and factual errors (2019)
Author : cwwc
Score : 56 points
Date : 2022-12-28 20:50 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (guzey.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (guzey.com)
| scoofy wrote:
| I read the book. I think it's fairly obvious that the research he
| presents is pretty speculative. That said, it's a _very_ popsci
| book, which is not really where you should be getting your facts
| from. It 's fine, and was an interesting read on the current
| state on some theories coming out of Berkeley.
|
| Ironically, this is why i really liked Freakonomics. All the
| studies they uses were just Levitt's studies, and you could just
| look them up and read them. I recently listened to a podcast
| criticizing the book and I couldn't even take it seriously,
| because you had a couple of laypersons who are politically
| aligned against the Chicago school and use that for the basis of
| their criticisms. I though it such a hilariously terrible
| "trashing" of the book that I couldn't stop shaking my head.
|
| If Books Could Kill:
| https://open.spotify.com/episode/5wHpooGMRsSBrUHhQZbOZp?si=4...
|
| I would prefer if Walker provided the citations for what this
| author is asking for, but the entire point of a popsci book _is
| that it 's not a scholarly article_. Walker isn't a doctor, he's
| a PhD in neurophysiology. I think the criticisms are warranted,
| but I think it's glaringly obvious from reading that the book
| isn't a work of serious scholarship.
| ludicity wrote:
| To respond to some concerns from marginalia_nu, I've spoken to
| Guzey once remotely and keep up with his writing from time to
| time. He is certainly not one to Gish Gallop someone, and
| generally I've been impressed by his forthrightness.
|
| Furthermore, Walker is aware of all the concerns raised in the
| original article (it was released a long time ago, not sure if it
| has been edited since). I dimly recall that most, if not all, of
| the concerns raised by Guzey turned out to be true. Walker
| essentially got away with it anyway. There's also a debate
| between the two of them on some British radio station, I believe,
| though at that point I declined to listen as I knew I'd get
| frustrated as it was clear you can just get away with this stuff.
|
| What's doubly weird for me is that I spent a year doing research
| at a prestigious sleep lab when I was studying, and honestly feel
| that Guzey's writing elsewhere is weirdly hostile to the concept
| of sleep. I'm extremely careful about it myself, and absolutely
| have massive performance degradation if I get anything less than
| eight hours. I,e. I don't even understand why Guzey is so opposed
| to pro-sleep messaging, but I think that's irrelevant when
| discussing Walker's conduct in writing the book.
|
| Asking Guzey to focus on just one or two undermines the thrust of
| his argument. Walker doesn't commit to a few big lies, truth
| throughout the entire first chapter is conveniently twisted for
| the sake of 'storytelling' that I saw done constantly in certain
| academic circles. The disdain for inconvenient facts (and oh boy,
| some of the graph edits seemed fraudulent to me when I last
| checked) is unacceptable if you have any respect for your
| audience or honesty. And I believe there was also a fabricated
| WHO quote? I just don't see how there can be nuance to this - the
| only thing I can see Walker hiding behind is a flimsy excuse like
| "it isn't a journal article". I don't expect pop science to be
| phenomenal, but I expect an academic not to falsify graphs:
| https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/#appendix-what-do-you-d...
| thenerdhead wrote:
| Every time I read this blog, I imagine that every popular author
| out in the world has one person on the internet who despises that
| author so much, they maintain a fact checked list and
| correspondence timeline as if it's some way to discredit the
| author. Meanwhile the author gets even more famous and helps many
| get better sleep even if part of their magnum opus contains
| errors.
| choxi wrote:
| This seems incredibly nit picky. My summary of a few points
| below:
|
| #1: Walker claims sleep deprivation decreases life span, but so
| does sleeping too much.
|
| #2: Walker says sleep deprivation is always bad, but sometimes it
| helps people with depression.
|
| #5: Walker said the WHO recommends 8 hours of sleep, but it's
| actually the National Sleep Foundation and they recommend 7-9
|
| Here's Walker's response to some of this:
| https://sleepdiplomat.wordpress.com/2019/12/19/why-we-sleep-...
| meindnoch wrote:
| As a rule of thumb, any popsci book hyped up by techbro/Joe
| Rogan/Lex Friedman/etc. types is going to be riddled with factual
| errors and "creative" interpretations, especially if it's about
| longevity, nutrition, health, etc.
| trts wrote:
| I think I've seen this guy appear on at least a half dozen
| shows and podcasts including Lex, Tim Ferris, Sam Harris, Fresh
| Air, TED Radio, Hidden Brain... seems like 5 years or so ago he
| was everywhere. This site lists 67 appearances:
| https://www.owltail.com/people/Uw4Ky-matthew-walker/appearan...
|
| In general the media has very low science literacy and loves
| someone credentialed, self-assured, and with an erudite accent
| and story to tell that can easily fill airtime.
|
| Acknowledging that junk science has managed to platform itself
| on some of the podcasts you mentioned, for myself I'd say that
| the long-form format at least allows for a greater possibility
| that the b.s. will out itself over 1.5-2 hours, versus a show
| like TED Radio Hour that is happy to bundle up a few nice
| sounding stories into something they can slip a Blackrock ad
| into.
| have_faith wrote:
| What does Lex have to do with the book?
| reducesuffering wrote:
| The book's author was on Lex's podcast.
| [deleted]
| k__ wrote:
| Isn't Friedman the counterexample to Rogan?
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Good thing then that Why We Sleep was hyped by always reliable
| and accurate New York Times, so we know we can trust it:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/10/books/review/snooze-micha...
|
| I mean, this Mathew Walker guy has been thoroughly vetted for
| accuracy by the diligent fact checkers from places known for
| integrity, like CNN
|
| https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/videos/tv/2020/10/15/matthew-walker-...
|
| or NPR
|
| https://www.npr.org/2017/10/16/558152847/why-we-sleep
|
| More seriously, though, _of course_ it's true that smart and
| confident sounding people are going to dupe Joe Rogan. He
| doesn't even pretend to be any sort of intellectual or rational
| truth-seeker. It is more concerning that such lousy kind of
| "expertise" as exhibited by Dr. Matthew Walker is more than
| good enough to dupe mainstream media organizations as well, but
| to anyone paying attention, this should not come as any sort of
| surprise: public trust in experts has been in free fall for
| more than a decade, and really accelerated in last 3 years. The
| thing you should ponder about, which you won't, is that your
| first instinct here is to slander your ideological opponents,
| using slurs like "tech bros".
| ryanklee wrote:
| I'm so sick of this cohort. They are obvious smugglers of bunk
| and loose thinking by bad actors. Sincerity is a paper thin
| cover and it's starting to rain.
| pastor_bob wrote:
| talm'bout leggs fridman bappa? Smartest guy I ever met
| lexandstuff wrote:
| Thank 'em.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| In general, criticism of this format is quite problematic and
| should be considered bad form. You see the format quite often in
| politically sensitive research and other infected areas (like
| nutrition), as a means of character assassination.
|
| For any given book, you can construct a list of accusations like
| these, laden with quotes and references. Some of the accusations
| may be absolutely true (it's rare for a book to be 100%
| accurate), or superficially seem to be true but actually more
| nuanced than that in a way that is not trivial to explain, some
| may even be fabrications. It's hard to tell for an outsider.
|
| Regardless of the accuracy of such a barrage of accusations, it
| takes an inordinate amount of time to respond to the criticism,
| as it will typically contain of several dozen points each of
| which require a lengthy response. And by that time it doesn't
| matter, the accusation will have already been accepted as true.
|
| If you're going to publish something like this, you should at
| least notify the author well ahead of time and give them ample
| opportunity to explain what you've found and construct a
| response.
| notRobot wrote:
| > _Regardless of the accuracy of such a barrage of accusations,
| it takes an inordinate amount of time to respond to the
| criticism, as it will typically contain of several dozen points
| each of which require a lengthy response. And by that time it
| doesn 't matter, the accusation will have already been accepted
| as true._
|
| See also: the gish gallop:
| https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop
|
| > _The Gish Gallop is the fallacious debate tactic of drowning
| your opponent in a flood of individually-weak arguments in
| order to prevent rebuttal of the whole argument collection
| without great effort._
| skinnymuch wrote:
| The book is accepted as true by more people than the
| criticism. The author got away with it.
|
| Interesting all of the criticisms are individually weak
| arguments. Like you're saying no argument is strong?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| There's nothing problematic with the criticism. The book is
| riddled with false claims and what's actually problematic is
| that someone sold countless of copies of fraudulent self-help
| on a contentious topic like sleep because they knew exactly it
| would sell like hotcakes regardless of its scientific accuracy.
|
| You're right that it's excatly like nutrition advice or
| politics in that there's a 80%+ chance whenever someone sells a
| hugely popular book in this field that most of it is just made
| the f*** up.
|
| Other sleep experts have asserted that the book is so awful as
| to constitute research misconduct and what we should do is give
| posts correcting bad science the attention they deserve and
| hold shoddy scientists and public intellectuals accountable.
| thatswrong0 wrote:
| This same vacuous argument could be applied to the book itself:
| Pop-sci books like this make a million claims and take an
| inordinate amount of time to verify. And by that time it
| doesn't matter, the claims will already have been accepted as
| true.
|
| See how pointless this is?
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| It is quite different.
|
| To argue against a book, you really only need to argue
| against its central theme. To combat a dozen accusations, you
| need to reply to each and every one to avoid being wounded by
| them.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| What would be a better form of criticism of accuracy of a book?
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| The intellectually honest thing is to assume not that the
| author is maliciously incompetent, but that you, the reader
| are missing something and inquire with the author about
| sources or reasoning for claims that contradict the apparent
| scientific consensus.
|
| If the author doesn't respond to such an inquiry within ample
| but reasonable time, then you can go loading up the shotgun
| with accusatory birdshot and take it to the court of public
| opinion.
|
| That's the last resort.
| TillE wrote:
| Some people ( _lots_ of people) really are just bullshit
| artists, and it 's a waste of time to consult with them
| personally when their thoughts are already out there, in
| the form of a published book.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| > in this essay, I'm going to highlight the five most egregious
| scientific and factual errors Walker makes in Chapter 1 of the
| book. This chapter contains 10 pages and constitutes less than
| 4% of the book by the total word count.
| pastor_bob wrote:
| point 3 is some nitpicky claim about Fatal familial insomnia.
|
| I don't find it to be egregious
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| This doesn't really change anything. The problem is the large
| number of accusations, not the size of the work being accused
| of inaccuracies.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| You still haven't explained how pointing out 5 factual
| errors in the first 4% of the book is actually in bad form.
|
| This in particular: "it takes an inordinate amount of time
| to respond to the criticism"
|
| Ain't it. If you are going to present yourself as an
| authority on a segment of human knowledge, then you should
| necessarily EXPECT to receive challenge when you haven't
| actually done your own homework. Nobody who writes a book
| while acting as an authority should be incapable of showing
| their work.
| sammalloy wrote:
| I think the point others are making is that you can make
| this accusation about most topics. Take the average, well-
| sourced Wikipedia article on a similar topic as an example.
| Choose it by random. You'll find the same issue. Every
| subject has some amount of internal disagreements,
| controversies, and inaccuracies. There will always be more
| questions than answers.
| prgmatic wrote:
| I had no idea that some people _benefit_ from sleep deprivation,
| but it makes a lot of sense to me experientially. I feel like I
| 'm a bit more focused when I get 4-6 hours of sleep even though
| my body typically wants 7-8.
| sammalloy wrote:
| I've seen some work on this. It turns out that some percentage
| of the population doesn't need sleep like the rest of us.
| Nobody knows why.
| Jorengarenar wrote:
| >a sleep scientist at Google
|
| A scientist of what at where?!
| muststopmyths wrote:
| They're researching injecting ads in your dreams
| Jorengarenar wrote:
| The worst part: I can imagine it
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >Any book of Why We Sleep's length is bound to contain some
| factual errors. Therefore, to avoid potential concerns about
| cherry-picking the few inaccuracies scattered throughout. In this
| essay, I'm going to highlight the five most egregious scientific
| and factual errors Walker makes in Chapter 1 of the book. This
| chapter contains 10 pages and constitutes less than 4% of the
| book by the total word count.
|
| Sometimes I write comedic science fiction with pseudoscientific
| argumentation from absurd angles so I don't hold the above
| against the authors, except they seem to think it should be taken
| seriously?
| Sniffnoy wrote:
| Rather than just being dismissive and expecting everyone to
| already agree with you, perhaps you could actually explain what
| problem you're seeing here?
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I would think the point was obvious, the implication of the
| text is that in finding 5 errors in 4% of the book it can be
| assumed that there are 125 errors of equivalent severity in
| the rest of the book.
|
| The assumption is that errors in written work are evenly
| distributed (which is such a ridiculous assumption that I
| have a hard time not being dismissive) Otherwise there would
| be an evident concern that they cherry-picked a part of the
| book that had more egregious errors than other parts.
| Sniffnoy wrote:
| Yes, my point is that spelling this out is important; I
| didn't find it obvious what you were trying to convey at
| all. (And more generally that people will not find obvious
| the same things as you, and that it's helpful to be
| explicit where possible.)
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _"Why We Sleep" Is Riddled with Scientific and Factual Errors_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26684519 - April 2021 (151
| comments)
|
| _Why We Sleep: A Tale of Institutional Failure_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22844723 - April 2020 (52
| comments)
|
| _"Why We Sleep" Is Riddled with Scientific and Factual Errors_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22419958 - Feb 2020 (34
| comments)
|
| _"Why We Sleep" Is Riddled with Scientific and Factual Errors_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21546850 - Nov 2019 (58
| comments)
|
| _Why We Sleep, and Why We Often Can't_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18798366 - Jan 2019 (80
| comments)
|
| _Productive on six hours of sleep? You're deluding yourself,
| expert says_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15401397 -
| Oct 2017 (295 comments)
|
| _Sleep deprivation is increasing our risk of serious illness_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15324195 - Sept 2017 (77
| comments)
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-12-28 23:00 UTC)