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Why We Sleep: a tale of institutional failure

yngve.hoiseth.net

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Re: Why We Sleep: a tale of institutional failure

#11

Post by gardenhedge »

reedf1 wrote: post #3

I've taken a look over the evidence and some of the examples. I am unimpressed. This reads like a very undergraduate teardown. Missing a bin in a histogram that maintains the general trend in a pop science book? My eyes roll into the back of my head. As per the longer teardown by Alexey Guzey, it sounds like he has 5 main contentions, all of which I would consider relatively inconsequential and points of academic, or…

wrt to it being a pop science book:

https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/#appendix-is-why-we-sle...

Re: Why We Sleep: a tale of institutional failure

#12

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #9
Simon_ORourke wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read it, and similarly, it seemed to have all the hallmarks of some takedown more motivated by a quest for notoriety/popularity that any systemic failings in academic literature review. It's an airport pop science book for goodness sake, it's not like fabricating results to get an article in Nature.

> It's an airport pop science book for goodness sake, it's not like fabricating results to get an article in Nature. An article in Nature may be read by a few thousand people. An airport pop book will influence tens or hundreds of millions. Especially for health related subjects it's standard of truth ought to be a lot higher.

As a scientist, I haven't written any airport pop book, but I often interact with the general public through journalistic interviews and articles, public dissemination talks, panels, short pieces for media outlets, etc.

In any of these contexts, if you want to be rigorous, journalists typically won't even allow you to. Any nuanced take will be dismissed as "too long", "too complicated", "the public won't understand this, we need to simplify", "we cannot discuss this in so much detail because we need to engage the reader", "yes, I know this isn't 100% accurate but we need a catchy headline", etc. So when we go out of the scientific bubble, the standard of truth drops enormously.

Not sure how it works with pop books but I suppose there is some non-scientist editor telling you how to "reach" the public, so I wouldn't expect it to be too different.

Re: Why We Sleep: a tale of institutional failure

#13

Post by devnonymous »

quenix wrote: post #10
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I haven't read the book but this analysis actually makes me want to do so. If the biggest issues that can be found with it are as described here, then I'd say it's likely to be in the top decile when it comes to rigorous pop science books.

No, the book is riddled with issues. This is far from the only one. Have a read through https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/ .

Since links are being posted, here's Walker's clarifications

https://sleepdiplomat.wordpress.com/

... where he first links to the takedown before addressing the issues.

Re: Why We Sleep: a tale of institutional failure

#14

Post by nonrandomstring »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #12
nonrandomstring wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's an airport pop science book for goodness sake, it's not like fabricating results to get an article in Nature. An article in Nature may be read by a few thousand people. An airport pop book will influence tens or hundreds of millions. Especially for health related subjects it's standard of truth ought to be a lot higher.

As a scientist, I haven't written any airport pop book, but I often interact with the general public through journalistic interviews and articles, public dissemination talks, panels, short pieces for media outlets, etc. In any of these contexts, if you want to be rigorous, journalists typically won't even allow you to. Any nuanced take will be dismissed as "too long", "too complicated", "the public won't understand t…

Yes that's a really unfortunate tension and one I'm familiar with writing computer science pieces for popular media. That pressure to "dumb down" nuanced, complex issues is infuriating. Part of the problem is the editor/publisher having a low view of readers. We always seem to be pandering to the lowest common denominator, rather than the average mind.

But I believe that if one is a fairly good writer a lot of nuance can be cut without sacrificing substantial truth.

What I noticed during Covid19 was the public bypassing those "think-walls" and going straight to the source papers/data. When necessary, ordinary folks can digest raw stuff without having it mashed and the crusts cut off.

Of course citizen science-journalism created it's own problems when everyone became an armchair epidemiologist.

Re: Why We Sleep: a tale of institutional failure

#15

Post by throwaway8877 »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #7
reedf1 wrote: post #3

I've taken a look over the evidence and some of the examples. I am unimpressed. This reads like a very undergraduate teardown. Missing a bin in a histogram that maintains the general trend in a pop science book? My eyes roll into the back of my head. As per the longer teardown by Alexey Guzey, it sounds like he has 5 main contentions, all of which I would consider relatively inconsequential and points of academic, or…

"undergraduate" appears here as a disparaging adverb? Academia showed me that freshmen arrive green and wide eyed, but also filled with integrity and wondrous belief in science. Only after graduation, masters, doctorate and postdoc are they fully ground down into cynical, jaded, institutionalised husks. Before they have learned to play "institutional games" undergrads are the kids who see when the Emperor has no clot…

Also they are naive and incompetent e.g. they are just laymen in an university.

Re: Why We Sleep: a tale of institutional failure

#16

Post by alienicecream »

The fetish for materialistic explanations and Science (TM) in general in our culture has created a market for here-today-gone-tomorrow "discoveries" about how to live our lives in the most efficient and productive manner. So anyone willing to slog through the mountains of trash produced by the publish or perish model and summarize the latest "findings" can potentially make a lot of money from the chattering classes that buy this tripe. The mistake this person has made is being young and naive. The purpose of these books is to buy them to have something to talk about at social gatherings to make you sound smart and then throw them in the trash, not take them as prescriptions for how to live. The publishers of these books know what they are for, so no investigation is necessary.
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