You can't bank sleep: researchers (making it up on the weekend doesn't work)

[HuckleB]

http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2010/01/13/sleep-loss-chronic.html

"Sleeping in to recover after chronic sleepless nights won't work, a new study suggests.

The study was designed to look at the effects of short- and long-term sleep loss and its effect on performance, such as reaction time. The results appear in Wednesday's issue of the journal Science Translational Medicine.

"We know that staying awake 24 hours in a row impairs performance to a level comparable to a blood-alcohol content beyond the legal limit to drive," said lead researcher Dr. Daniel Cohen of Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital.

When people who are chronically sleep deprived pull an all-nighter, "the deterioration is increased tenfold," added Cohen, who is also a neurologist at Harvard Medical School.

..."


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Bummer for all those high school and college students out there!

[RC]

1. Bummer on the patients the med students are doctoring on also.

[HuckleB]

3. True.

[Mojorabbit]

2. I think it was last year

where I read that studies showed you could make it up which refuted what I had been taught in the dark ages in nursing school which was that you could not make it up. They need to make up their minds!

[HuckleB]

4. Luckily, science doesn't just make up its mind.

:hi:

[Mojorabbit]

5. No, just published study

after study in which one may refute the other!

[HuckleB]

6. Sometimes it goes that way, but then I haven't seen the study you mention.

[salvorhardin]

9. Over time there is a convergence to consensus in science though

As more studies accumulate, examining a problem from different aspects, science moves toward a consensus view. There are almost always outliers but the trend becomes clear.

Your problem relates more to the way science is reported in the media. Because research is often deadly dull to read about, science reporters (or just journalists since qualified science reporters are a dying breed) look for studies that have a hook to them, something that can be turned into a story that relates directly to the reader. In health and medicine reporting nothing does that more than something which contradicts conventional wisdom or previous research. So we tend to get this endless stream of articles that flip-flop over common medical problems or deadly diseases. This problem is usually exacerbated by editors who write eye-grabbing headlines that often conflict with what is actually being reported on. Then science denialists latch onto the media reporting to sow fear and doubt about science.

[BadgerKid]

7. Only 9 participants so call me skeptical. n/t

[HuckleB]

8. On a study that is this in depth, you're not going to have thousands of participants.

You have to look at the type of study, not just the numbers.