Reporters don’t seem to understand that sleep research is even worse than nutrition research. When the Atlantic published a new article claiming that 9-5 work was bad for creatives, I knew the research “backing this up” would turn out to be terribly performed:
Study 1 (n=20) 1 day of observations
Study 2 broken link
Study 3 (n=21) 6 weeks of self-reporting
Study 4 (n=15) 3 days of testing
Study 1 – Really? 1 day? That’s your study design when you’re trying to figure out how much lack of sleep leads to fatigue? This is like having a drug study with no washout period.
Study 2 – If I were a sleep researcher, I’d probably want to break my web server too so no one could critique my terrible work.
Study 3 – Diaries and self-reporting. That will be a cheap study to run! Oh look: 47% of the variation in students’ grades were determined by how much they slept two weeks before exams. Wow — what a profound sounding result! But the correlation of “grades” to sleep only applied to one class. The researchers actually collected all the students’ grades and when you look at all classes, the correlation evaporates. I guess peer review can’t block things like this since your peers do things like publish 1 day sleep studies on chronic fatigue.
Study 4 – Let me get this straight… you measured 11 days of data but published your results based on only the first 3? Go home sleep researchers, you are drunk!
See on www.theatlantic.com
4 Responses to “Sleep research is always terrible”
December 16
Will SawinMaybe the researchers need to get more sleep.
December 16
Rethink EvrythingHaha, I’m so glad you posted this 🙂
December 17
Amit AminBeautiful.
December 18
Alexander MacraeYou can hit an almost awake zone where a Gestalt form of thought takes over. About 3 am in my experience.