Also: ”A.J.K.P. and S.W.C. are co-founders and co-directors of Circadian Health Innovations PTY LTD.”
Lemme guess, looking for funding.
The whole publish-or-perish culture is a disaster that incentivizes cheating.
It should be considered just as valuable to have a few grad students working on replication as on original research, and that should not hurt the students' prospects.
This should be the work of grad students, not cranking out another paper or slaving for professors.
> We should also demand publication of failures -- it's ok to fail, but only if you publish about the failure.
I really want to have a journal that just publishes interesting duds. Someone else might look at your methodology and get their own idea.
> This should be the work of grad students, not cranking out another paper or slaving for professors.
But the professors need to arrange for this.
Maybe the next study could be “live king cobra in the bed results in sleep reduction”.
Probably a book and a TED talk to go with it.
You can almost see the grin as they wrote up the results.
Peer review just checks for obvious errors in study design, asks for more info if needed, and decides whether the paper is a good fit for the journal.
Watson and Crick's paper describing the structure of DNA wasn't peer reviewed. if you think they're wrong, try it for yourself and publish the results.
When a few groups all get the same result then you can be confident about the claims made. until then, it's just kind of interesting to think about, which is fine.
> A.J.K.P. and S.W.C. are co-founders and co-directors of Circadian Health Innovations PTY LTD
I do agree that this paper alone should not be used to help sell a product. But it looks like this paper just confirms previous findings using more rigorous methodology (see background):
"Light at night causes circadian disruption, (21–23) and is therefore a potential determinant of cardiovascular disease risk. Higher risks for coronary artery disease (24) and stroke (25) have been observed in people living in urban environments with brighter outdoor night light, as measured by satellite. Brighter night light has been cross-sectionally related to atherosclerosis, (26,27) obesity, hypertension, and diabetes (28) in small but well-characterized cohorts, using bedroom (26,27) and wrist-worn (28) light sensors. Moreover, experimental exposure to night light elevates heart rate and alters sympathovagal balance. (29) However, current evidence linking night light with cardiovascular risk is mostly within small cohorts, or relies on geospatial-level measurements of outdoor lighting, rather than measures of personal light exposure. (30,31)"
Wondering how much of this is due to geography and air quality. City centers have relatively bad air quality and a high amount of ambient lighting at night, compared to non urbanized areas.
The cardiovascular effects of poor air quality is arguably well understood.
Is this a medical condition that has a name?
Is this one of those things where some element is considered desirable in the Western world (e.g. warm white lighting) but is associated with destitution in another culture (because it’s like incandescent lighting)?
The paper concedes that shift work is unhealthy[1] but claims that shift work doesn't explain their finding[2]. And their conclusion is "avoiding night light may be a promising approach for preventing cardiovascular diseases," but without telling us why. It's going to be fascinating if there's a mechanism by which sleeping with light can cause heart disease.
[1] "Evidence demonstrates higher risks of adverse cardiovascular events, coronary heart disease, heart failure, atrial fibrillation, and mortality due to cardiovascular disease in rotating shift workers."
[2] "Following separate adjustments for pre-existing diabetes, hypertension, high BMI, high cholesterol ratio, short, long, or inefficient sleep, and exclusion of shift workers, the relationships of night light with cardiovascular risks were attenuated but remained statistically significant for all outcomes except stroke."
patrickhogan1•4h ago
ekianjo•3h ago
bracketfocus•2h ago