These points and the Guzey essay were discussed in depth in Science Fictions by Stuart Ritchie, which features examples of negligence and fraud in science. Having read and enjoyed the message in Why We Sleep, my first reaction before reading based on the length of the essay was that the motivation was axe-grindy, but the further I read the more it made sense and the more egregious Walker's claims seemed. The lack of a response from Walker is another serious concern (especially after Andrew Gelman highlights this). It seems that he is trying to avoid a Streisand Effect by ignoring it completely. If that is the case, Walker's strategy seems to be working because on the comments on new threads like this, many mention mention Walker but seem unaware of the criticisms.

Doesn't he have a response on his website? I swear I read it at some point

Oh, right, thank you and GP for reminding me, there was more discussion of this:

Here Gelman's pieces (at stat modeling):

https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/11/18/is-matthew...

https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/12/27/why-we-sle... (<- more links in this one)

Quote from Gelman: > We’ve left “super-important researcher too busy to respond to picky comments” territory and left “well-intentioned but sloppy researcher can’t keep track of citations” territory and entered “research misconduct” territory.

This may be a response by Walker to criticism:

https://sleepdiplomat.wordpress.com/2019/12/19/why-we-sleep-...

Here's a reddit discussion where Guzey responds to that response and raises further points:

https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/ekdbo2/matt...

My thoughts exactly. My overall takeaway from sleep research is that although there are some health risks with undersleeping, there are (possibly greater) health risks with oversleeping, plus the prevalence of sleep deprivation is greatly overestimated.