Note that Matt Walker has fallen from grace, at least on HN. His book "Why we sleep" used to be widely recommended around here, but there appear to be very serious scientific shortcomings affecting some of the information he presents.

See e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21546850

That is not to say he's wrong on every count, but take what he says with a huge grain of "might have been invented/fudged and then cited from and by himself" salt.

I wasn't aware of that, thanks for the info!

You might be interested in a counterpoint from someone who (claims to) study sleep:

https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/dwtr0m/matt...

Yes, I have seen that. The author of the article has also posted a refutation of the counterpoints, with no substantive replies by Kinkajoe.

The overarching point that guzey makes is "the book is not scientifically sound, despite Matthew Walker plainly stating in the introduction that it would be". Arguing that Walker's claims are "hyperbolic, [but] within reason", that it's ok because "it is a book intended for the public" or that all this is "justified by the important message he is trying to convey" is completely besides the point! That may all be true and not change the needle one bit on "scientifically accurate".

Making up unsubstantiated claims to ""convey a message"" in a book and then later citing the book in your own scientific papers is the exact opposite of academic integrity. Hence my advice to take Walker's work with an appropriate grain of salt.

You literally linked to the same article as the parent comment.

Wouldn't that be shocking? But in fact, the URL in question opens a specific reply to that article. How embarrassing!

Dammit, sorry.

> the negative affects that DST has on society

The last time a DST thread came up a couple of months ago, I dug into all the research being cited, and I found it being wildly overstated and sometimes outright misleading. There seems to be a group of people with an agenda to abolish DST for some reason, but I’ve become even more skeptical about these claims of measurable negative effects.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24314134

The tl;dr is that a bunch of papers are being cited that studied long term sleep deprivation, that did not study DST at all. The idea that long term serious sleep loss is bad for you is being applied to (short term, temporary) DST without any evidence that DST is causing any widespread long term lack of sleep.

I do believe strongly in sleep being healthy. But one reason I’m skeptical about supposed negative health claims of DST specifically is that a huge number of people have weekly changes in sleeping habits that are larger than the twice yearly one hour shift. What matters is getting enough sleep long term, and most people adapt to DST fast enough that it doesn’t affect long term sleep — even the article admitted that a few weeks is rare.