Thanks for sharing. Very informative. Especially this quote gave me pause:
> I wanted to drop you a line to thank you for all the time and effort involved in debunking Matthew Walker’s book. As someone who works with individuals with insomnia on a daily basis, I know from firsthand experience the harm that Walker’s book is causing.
> I have many stories of people who slept well on less than eight hours of sleep, read Walker’s book, tried to get more sleep and this led to more time awake, frustration, worry, sleep-related anxiety, and insomnia. …
Disappointing... That book has been highly recommended ad infinitum on HN, to the point that it was sounding like gospel. Maybe that should've been a hint, heh.
This may constitute a response, but it’s not clear if the original author wrote it in response to Guzey’s claims, or if it was the author or just an imitator. The writing style strongly suggests it’s the author, and it uses the author’s twitter handle and website name as the subdomain: https://sleepdiplomat.wordpress.com/2019/12/19/why-we-sleep-...
Glad someone posted this.
This book gets so much praise. But like any popsci book, there are huge incentives for the author to exaggerate and manipulate to produce a clear and marketable message. Just consider that if there was no interesting story to tell about sleep, of course there would be no book.
Funnily enough, there's also a completely different book by the very same name, written by a German sleep researcher. And this one's actually really good (imo). [1]
What a great critique. I'd like to see a similar treatment of Jason Hickel's "The Divide", which feels both terribly important and very biased and sloppy.
Agreed, I would pay something for a feed of critiques like this, would save me time dodging poorly constructed literature, I like books, they are like the internet but usually a little more refined.
I'd like to give this a more thorough read, but so far this critique strikes me as done in bad faith. I read the book. I'm also in the middle of a biophys PhD, so I like to think my opinion is "extra super special". Here are my comments:
Point 1: the chart bottoms out at 7, which falls within the range the book recommends. I'm fairly sure he recommends 7-9, and that the required amt varies from person to person. Another thought I had: metabolism and longevity go hand and hand. I mean, I just read a brand new paper from George Church's Harvard lab, showing that they reversed several chronic ailments in mice by inserting FGF21, which regulates glucose levels. And sleep absolutely regulates metabolism. Personally, I'm keeping my ears perked up when it comes to metabolism/circadian rhythms/homeostasis, etc.
Point 2: Depression is an incredibly complicated topic. It is a psychological construct, the net result of thousands and thousands of genes, filtered through a modern technological world, and then filtered through inventories, interviews, and assessments. For this reason, I am not at all surprised that Guzey was able to find studies that suggest that sleep deprivation might have some benefit for some people. I would HIGHLY recommend this new, open-access Nature review paper covering the genome wide studies on depression: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-019-0450-5. Its almost not worth pitting a complex phenotype like depression against another complex behavior like depression. But what the hell, let's brush with broad strokes: the significant genetic variants associated with depression have to do with regulating homeostasis (eg sirtuins). So I would not be surprised if good sleep is at least correlated with low levels of depression.
Point 3: I know almost nothing about FFI, but we have kept mice awake, and they do eventually die. I'm pretty sure humans would die too, but ethics precludes us from performing such a study.
Points 4&5: This is just fussing about Walker's writing and WHO. I'll have to agree with Guzey that Walker's citations and consistency are often weak. And I honestly couldn't care less about WHO. But I'm pretty confident that sleep quantity has declined with time across the world. I remain curious about the connections between light and circadian rhythms (I think retinal cells go straight to the superchiasmatic nucleus, the circadian rhythm controller). Also, sugar is a thing in the modern world.
So yeah, I'm just frustrated by his nitpicking, and his seeming lack of appreciation for sleep as an open biological question. We don't know why we sleep, really. If anything, the title is the worst part of the book. But at least the contents respect the question. This criticism does not. Nonetheless, I am a sucker for obsessive bloggers (eg slatestar, gwern, cowen, etc), so I will definitely be checking out Guzey's other writing. It looks interesting.
To my knowledge, Walker hasn't responded to Guzey's criticisms. The other issue that has emerged in the weeks since Guzey published his critique is that Walker seems to be using the erroneous claims in his book in his papers. Relevant exchange here: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/11/24/why-we-sle...
>Point 1: the chart bottoms out at 7, which falls within the range the book recommends. I'm fairly sure he recommends 7-9, and that the required amt varies from person to person. Another thought I had: metabolism and longevity go hand and hand. I mean, I just read a brand new paper from George Church's Harvard lab, showing that they reversed several chronic ailments in mice by inserting FGF21, which regulates glucose levels. And sleep absolutely regulates metabolism. Personally, I'm keeping my ears perked up when it comes to metabolism/circadian rhythms/homeostasis, etc.
The point you're making has nothing to do with the point I'm making in the relevant section. I take issue with Walker writing "the shorter your sleep, the shorter your life span". You seem to have missed this part entirely. If you say that the book recommends 7-9, feel free to quote the book because it definitely seems that he strongly advocates at least 8 hours. Example: as I showed in section 5, Walker takes 7-9 hours recommendation from the National Sleep Foundation and then falsely claims that they recommend 8 hours of sleep.
>Point 2: Depression is an incredibly complicated topic. It is a psychological construct, the net result of thousands and thousands of genes, filtered through a modern technological world, and then filtered through inventories, interviews, and assessments. For this reason, I am not at all surprised that Guzey was able to find studies that suggest that sleep deprivation might have some benefit for some people. I would HIGHLY recommend this new, open-access Nature review paper covering the genome wide studies on depression: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-019-0450-5. Its almost not worth pitting a complex phenotype like depression against another complex behavior like depression. But what the hell, let's brush with broad strokes: the significant genetic variants associated with depression have to do with regulating homeostasis (eg sirtuins). So I would not be surprised if good sleep is at least correlated with low levels of depression.
You missed the point I was making entirely. Walker wrote that there are no biological functions that do not benefit from a good night's sleep. I point out that this is false, as sleep deprivation therapy is a safe, effective, and a very-well studied treatment for depression.
>Point 3: I know almost nothing about FFI, but we have kept mice awake, and they do eventually die. I'm pretty sure humans would die too, but ethics precludes us from performing such a study.
You missed the point I was making entirely, again. Walker wrote that FFI demonstrates that lack of sleep kills people. I pointed out that saying that is completely false. What relation do mice have to the point I was making?
>Points 4&5: This is just fussing about Walker's writing and WHO. I'll have to agree with Guzey that Walker's citations and consistency are often weak. And I honestly couldn't care less about WHO. But I'm pretty confident that sleep quantity has declined with time across the world. I remain curious about the connections between light and circadian rhythms (I think retinal cells go straight to the superchiasmatic nucleus, the circadian rhythm controller). Also, sugar is a thing in the modern world.
Points 4&5: this again has very little relationship with what I was writing. In section 4, I pointed out that Walker has seemingly invented a sleep loss epidemic and attributed it to the WHO. This is not just an issue with citations. In section 5, I pointed out that Walker misrepresents National Sleep Foundations sleep guidelines, saying that they recommend 8 hours of sleep, while in reality they recommend 7-9 hours of sleep.
For readers of this exchange: if you're still unsure how serious my concerns with the book are, the clearest example is provided in section 18, where I show deliberate data manipulation by Walker. He simply edited out the part of the graph that contradicted his argument in the book: https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/#appendix-what-do-you-d...
'Point 2: Depression is an incredibly complicated topic. It is a psychological construct, the net result of thousands and thousands of genes, filtered through a modern technological world, and then filtered through inventories, interviews, and assessments. For this reason, I am not at all surprised that Guzey was able to find studies that suggest that sleep deprivation might have some benefit for some people. I would HIGHLY recommend this new, open-access Nature.....'
All of this is completely irrelevant to Guzey's point, which is that sleep deprivation is a known treatment for depression. You are going off on a tangent about the genetics of depression, while failing to engage with the topic under discussion.
yhoiseth|6 years ago
> I wanted to drop you a line to thank you for all the time and effort involved in debunking Matthew Walker’s book. As someone who works with individuals with insomnia on a daily basis, I know from firsthand experience the harm that Walker’s book is causing.
> I have many stories of people who slept well on less than eight hours of sleep, read Walker’s book, tried to get more sleep and this led to more time awake, frustration, worry, sleep-related anxiety, and insomnia. …
Reedx|6 years ago
Has Walker responded to that critique?
Gatsky|6 years ago
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/12/27/why-we-sle...
Now that looks quite bad.
Shank|6 years ago
unknown|6 years ago
[deleted]
Gatsky|6 years ago
_0ffh|6 years ago
[1] https://service.randomhouse.de/paperback/Why-We-Sleep/Albrec...
kaiwen1|6 years ago
tudorw|6 years ago
biophysboy|6 years ago
Point 1: the chart bottoms out at 7, which falls within the range the book recommends. I'm fairly sure he recommends 7-9, and that the required amt varies from person to person. Another thought I had: metabolism and longevity go hand and hand. I mean, I just read a brand new paper from George Church's Harvard lab, showing that they reversed several chronic ailments in mice by inserting FGF21, which regulates glucose levels. And sleep absolutely regulates metabolism. Personally, I'm keeping my ears perked up when it comes to metabolism/circadian rhythms/homeostasis, etc.
Point 2: Depression is an incredibly complicated topic. It is a psychological construct, the net result of thousands and thousands of genes, filtered through a modern technological world, and then filtered through inventories, interviews, and assessments. For this reason, I am not at all surprised that Guzey was able to find studies that suggest that sleep deprivation might have some benefit for some people. I would HIGHLY recommend this new, open-access Nature review paper covering the genome wide studies on depression: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-019-0450-5. Its almost not worth pitting a complex phenotype like depression against another complex behavior like depression. But what the hell, let's brush with broad strokes: the significant genetic variants associated with depression have to do with regulating homeostasis (eg sirtuins). So I would not be surprised if good sleep is at least correlated with low levels of depression.
Point 3: I know almost nothing about FFI, but we have kept mice awake, and they do eventually die. I'm pretty sure humans would die too, but ethics precludes us from performing such a study.
Points 4&5: This is just fussing about Walker's writing and WHO. I'll have to agree with Guzey that Walker's citations and consistency are often weak. And I honestly couldn't care less about WHO. But I'm pretty confident that sleep quantity has declined with time across the world. I remain curious about the connections between light and circadian rhythms (I think retinal cells go straight to the superchiasmatic nucleus, the circadian rhythm controller). Also, sugar is a thing in the modern world.
So yeah, I'm just frustrated by his nitpicking, and his seeming lack of appreciation for sleep as an open biological question. We don't know why we sleep, really. If anything, the title is the worst part of the book. But at least the contents respect the question. This criticism does not. Nonetheless, I am a sucker for obsessive bloggers (eg slatestar, gwern, cowen, etc), so I will definitely be checking out Guzey's other writing. It looks interesting.
shadowsun7|6 years ago
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/11/18/is-matthew...
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/11/24/why-we-sle...
To my knowledge, Walker hasn't responded to Guzey's criticisms. The other issue that has emerged in the weeks since Guzey published his critique is that Walker seems to be using the erroneous claims in his book in his papers. Relevant exchange here: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/11/24/why-we-sle...
guzey|6 years ago
>Point 1: the chart bottoms out at 7, which falls within the range the book recommends. I'm fairly sure he recommends 7-9, and that the required amt varies from person to person. Another thought I had: metabolism and longevity go hand and hand. I mean, I just read a brand new paper from George Church's Harvard lab, showing that they reversed several chronic ailments in mice by inserting FGF21, which regulates glucose levels. And sleep absolutely regulates metabolism. Personally, I'm keeping my ears perked up when it comes to metabolism/circadian rhythms/homeostasis, etc.
The point you're making has nothing to do with the point I'm making in the relevant section. I take issue with Walker writing "the shorter your sleep, the shorter your life span". You seem to have missed this part entirely. If you say that the book recommends 7-9, feel free to quote the book because it definitely seems that he strongly advocates at least 8 hours. Example: as I showed in section 5, Walker takes 7-9 hours recommendation from the National Sleep Foundation and then falsely claims that they recommend 8 hours of sleep.
>Point 2: Depression is an incredibly complicated topic. It is a psychological construct, the net result of thousands and thousands of genes, filtered through a modern technological world, and then filtered through inventories, interviews, and assessments. For this reason, I am not at all surprised that Guzey was able to find studies that suggest that sleep deprivation might have some benefit for some people. I would HIGHLY recommend this new, open-access Nature review paper covering the genome wide studies on depression: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-019-0450-5. Its almost not worth pitting a complex phenotype like depression against another complex behavior like depression. But what the hell, let's brush with broad strokes: the significant genetic variants associated with depression have to do with regulating homeostasis (eg sirtuins). So I would not be surprised if good sleep is at least correlated with low levels of depression.
You missed the point I was making entirely. Walker wrote that there are no biological functions that do not benefit from a good night's sleep. I point out that this is false, as sleep deprivation therapy is a safe, effective, and a very-well studied treatment for depression.
>Point 3: I know almost nothing about FFI, but we have kept mice awake, and they do eventually die. I'm pretty sure humans would die too, but ethics precludes us from performing such a study.
You missed the point I was making entirely, again. Walker wrote that FFI demonstrates that lack of sleep kills people. I pointed out that saying that is completely false. What relation do mice have to the point I was making?
>Points 4&5: This is just fussing about Walker's writing and WHO. I'll have to agree with Guzey that Walker's citations and consistency are often weak. And I honestly couldn't care less about WHO. But I'm pretty confident that sleep quantity has declined with time across the world. I remain curious about the connections between light and circadian rhythms (I think retinal cells go straight to the superchiasmatic nucleus, the circadian rhythm controller). Also, sugar is a thing in the modern world.
Points 4&5: this again has very little relationship with what I was writing. In section 4, I pointed out that Walker has seemingly invented a sleep loss epidemic and attributed it to the WHO. This is not just an issue with citations. In section 5, I pointed out that Walker misrepresents National Sleep Foundations sleep guidelines, saying that they recommend 8 hours of sleep, while in reality they recommend 7-9 hours of sleep.
For readers of this exchange: if you're still unsure how serious my concerns with the book are, the clearest example is provided in section 18, where I show deliberate data manipulation by Walker. He simply edited out the part of the graph that contradicted his argument in the book: https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/#appendix-what-do-you-d...
martingoodson|6 years ago
All of this is completely irrelevant to Guzey's point, which is that sleep deprivation is a known treatment for depression. You are going off on a tangent about the genetics of depression, while failing to engage with the topic under discussion.