The reason that ST > DST is that bedtime is largely influenced by the sun, yet wake time is largely influenced by work / school. When sunset is pushed back an hour, people get less sleep, and for kids this is massively detrimental to their education. India is doing this experiment in real time because they only have one time zone. Kids in the western half, where the sun sets later, have much worse educational outcomes, and as you move east the education outcomes get better.

The sun sets where I am at ~430pm during the winter in standard time. I don't really see how having the sun set at 530pm instead would have a substantial effect on bedtime. There is so little sunlight in the winter that work/social life are what drive wakeup and bedtime. I imagine this isn't as true in India. Is there any research that accounts for the actual length of daylight available?

Talking about the whole year, not just the winter. In Summer later sunset affects bedtime. In winter later sunrise affects rise time.

The proposal will only change the winter though, we are already only on standard time for 4 months of the year.

We're talking about whether permanent ST is better than permanent DST, not DST switching vs not switching.

> just thinking this through logically, whether we are on DST or ST permanently shouldn't matter one way or another

It's observational, empirical research. The results are valid whether you understand them or not.

Seeking to understand the research is still a valid endeavor. We shouldn't blindly accept research without understanding it's implications and trying to suss out the reason for the observed results.

> We shouldn't blindly accept research without understanding it's implications and trying to suss out the reason for the observed results.

You're not wrong, but (e.g.) this paper has several dozen references, stating at the end:

> In summary, the scientific literature strongly argues against the switching between DST and Standard Time and even more so against adopting DST permanently. The latter would exaggerate all the effects described above beyond the simple extension of DST from approximately 8 months/year to 12 months/year (depending on country) since body clocks are generally even later during winter than during the long photoperiods of summer (with DST) (Kantermann et al., 2007; Hadlow et al., 2014, 2018; Hashizaki et al., 2018). Perennial DST increases SJL prevalence even more, as described above.

* https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2019.0094...

If you want to fact check the folks who have this as their careers, you're welcome to pick up studying circadian rhythms as a hobby. But most of us ain't got time for that, so I'm willing to trust the experts and move on with my life.

We just spent two years having to put up with folks being arm chair epidemiologist with COVID, do we have to do it all over again with chronobiologists?

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronobiology

> We just spent two years having to put up with folks being arm chair epidemiologist with COVID, do we have to do it all over again with chronobiologists?

If COVID taught me anything, it's to question the experts. Only in the past half a year or so have the "experts" come around to what the layperson had been saying in 2020.

Presumably because opening/working hours remain the same by the clock when we switch (or when you are on the edge of a zone as in some of the studies) rather than adjust, and they are currently more optimal for one of those.

At any rate, I also strongly suspect it doesn't matter which one is picked but only as long as everything else is adjusted around it.