Talk:Why We Sleep

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"sleep scientist"

Should "sleep scientist" be in quotes? These seem like scare quotes, meant to detract from the legitimacy of this scientist—who in fact studies sleep. Mostlymostly (talk) 16:41, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

Changed to unquoted sleep researcher. — Lentower (talk) 17:13, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

Criticism section

It's unclear why criticism by an unqualified individual, seemingly promoting a personal blog, should be part of this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.55.29.100 (talk) 15:33, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

I'm the "unqualified individual" in question. I did not edit that page and I was not the person who added the link to my blog to it. AlexeyGuzey (talk) 18:22, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Personal blog by Alexey Guzey, who bills himself as "an independent researcher with background in Economics, Mathematics, and Cognitive Science" but is not otherwise recognized as an expert in this field, is not WP:RS, and fails to meet the exception noted in WP:BLOGS: "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications." Accordingly, I removed that part of the Criticism section. NedFausa (talk) 20:46, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

You left the link to the post by Andrew Gelman and removed the link to my post, writing that I'm an unreliable source. But the claims Gelman makes in his post are primarily based on my post the link to which you removed.

If Gelman's post legitimizes my post, then why remove the link to my post (instead of leaving it alongside to Gelman)? If Gelman's post doesn't legitimize my post, why leave the link to his post?

If I understand your reasoning correctly, since Gelman is a reliable source, he can base his claims off any unreliable source he wants (like me, according to you) and this is OK for Wikipedia... but the source itself still can't be linked. AlexeyGuzey (talk) 21:16, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

As it stands, we link to Gelman's post, which in turn links to the blog by Alexey Guzey. That is entirely sufficient for the purposes of a brief mention on Wikipedia. Moreover, linking directly to Alexey Guzey would violate WP:RS no matter how many other Internet pages link to it without certifying Alexey Guzey's status as an expert in this field. Additionally, for us to question Professor Gelman's sources would violate Wikipedia:No original research. You may not agree with these policies, but we are obliged to comply. NedFausa (talk) 21:36, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

Given that my interest in wikipedia is directly correlated with ridiculous edit wars, I won't be participating in this article discussion or modifying the original page any more. Instead, I'll provide my input on this talk page exactly once. NedFausa removed a claim that an Guzey had found factual errors in the article. This statement was a true statement, because the citation reflected the statement. The actual linked page on Guzey's blog provided sources, including well-researched journal articles, direct comparison to said articles, and in effect, an entire wikipedia page's worth of fact checking and citations. This is the content that we want on Wikipedia! This is the kind of thing that helps clear up factual misunderstandings, and is the basis for the entire encyclopedia. Many of the editors here have no credentials to speak of. They simply synthesize information from outside sources and compile them into an article. The policy on WP:BLOGS and WP:RS are designed to protect against unsourced claims appearing in articles as truths. This could happen if someone with absolutely no credentials makes a statement that says that something is wrong, or false, or libel, etc, and then that is picked up and put into a wikipedia article as fact. It is not designed for the purposes of removing substantiated or well-cited claims from the encyclopedia. Removing the statement that Guzey started the discussion is whitewashing, and effectively transfers the statement credit from Guzey (who did the research) to Gelman, who wrote about and agreed with Guzey's research (as he himself says in his blog). If a person makes a claim and an expert agrees with that claim, the expert does not get credit for making the claim originally by virtue of being the credentialed expert. Yet, this is exactly what happened here. Gelman is not the author, nor the source, of the research into the factual accuracy of the book. He deserves credit for his contributions to it, but he is certainly not the originator of the criticism. Guzey's does not violate WP:BLOGS and WP:RS simply by virtue of being a blog. If wikipedia is a collection of synthesis of research, and Guzey's blog is simply that same process hosted on a personal location, is that not good enough for a single weak claim in an article? Lucas "nicatronTg" Nicodemus (talk) 21:41, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

@NicatronTg: "Weak claim!" You're actually advocating inclusion of a weak claim in this article? Tell me it ain't so, Joe. NedFausa (talk) 21:48, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

Why, exactly, would you ping me over this? WP:PA? I don't mean the claim is "weak" as in unsubstantial, but rather in terms of the "impact of the statement on the voracity of the subject." Lucas "nicatronTg" Nicodemus (talk) 21:55, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

Misleading sentence

The last sentence gave me a misleading impression of the state of the debate: "Walker has subsequently provided a response to these comments[15]."

According to the original author of the criticism, the "Responses to questions from readers" page does not grapple with his and Gelman's criticisms and does not seems to be targeted at them. After a bit skimming, I share that assessment and suggest removing the sentence in question. Meerpirat (talk) 19:52, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

I'm the author of the original critique of the book. It is correct that I believe that this "response" is inadequate. The link in the post above talks about many points in detail but the one that I believe is one of the most illustrating is the point about sleep and cancer risk. As I'm not taking part in editing the main page about the book, I will paste that point from the link here (with slight changes):

Section Short sleep and the magnitude of associated cancer risk. (this section seems to be addressing my section Also, no – sleeping less than 6 hours a night does not double your risk of cancer

The second paragraph of Chapter 1 of the book reads:

Routinely sleeping less than six or seven hours a night demolishes your immune system, more than doubling your risk of cancer.

The blog post reads:

Several studies, however, have indicated that short sleep is associated with a doubling of risk for specific cancers … It is not correct to suggest, based on epidemiological findings, that sleeping less than 6 or 7 hours causes cancer.

But that blog post never addresses the fact that the book made this strictly causal claim and so never addresses the point I made. As a somewhat amusing detail, here’s a description of one of the studies on the association of sleep and cancer that blog post cites in that section:

Described in a 2014 study, 2,586 men sleeping 6.5 hours a night or less had more than a two-fold greater risk of lung cancer after adjusting for smoking history (hazard ratio (HR): 2.12 \[8\]).

This is the linked study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24684747. The study says:

Significant association between sleep duration and increased lung cancer risk was observed after adjustments for age, examination years, cumulative smoking history, family cancer history and Human Population Laboratory Depression scale scores (HR 2.12, 95% CI 1.17-3.85 for ≤6.5 h sleep, and HR 1.88, 95% CI 1.09-3.22 for ≥8 h sleep). Associations were even stronger among current smokers (HR 2.23, 95% CI 1.14-4.34 for ≤6.5 h sleep, and HR 2.09, 95% CI 1.14-3.81 for ≥8 h sleep).

The study found 2.12 hazard ratio for less or equal to 6.5h of sleep and lung cancer and 1.88 for more or equal to 8h of sleep and lung cancer! I have no idea how this supports anything Walker wrote.

AlexeyGuzey (talk) 05:23, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by SL93 (talk) 18:38, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

(

• Comment or view
• Article history

)

• ... that Matthew Walker was actually driven to write Why We Sleep because of a woman who passed by him and took a peek at his work? Source: Financial Times

Created by TheOneMattMan (talk). Self-nominated at 12:33, 12 May 2022 (UTC).

• : The article is new enough (5x expansion started on May 11, 2022; not created) and long enough (11,997 characters). Well written and well cited. The hook is interesting and sourced, both here and in the article. The hook meets the formatting guidelines and other rules. QPQ not required. Good to go! – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 10:58, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

Inscrutable Introduction

"Why We Sleep has gone on to become a bestseller under The New York Times and The Sunday Times that questions its namesake from the viewpoint of neuroscience."

I would correct this if I had any chance at all of figuring out what the author meant. What is the "namesake" of "why we sleep"? IAmNitpicking (talk) 12:38, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

Confusing criticism

"Some of Walker's evidence originated from his time of working 20 years at Harvard University and Berkeley, making his claim on the side effects of lacking sleep questionable to critics" - I don't follow what this sentence is trying to say. Why would this make the claim questionable? JaggedHamster (talk) 14:28, 10 June 2022 (UTC)