Item — HN Reader

"Compared to students who reported sleeping eight hours at night, high school students who slept less than six hours were twice as likely to self-report using alcohol, tobacco, marijuana or other drugs, and driving after drinking alcohol. They were also nearly twice as likely to report carrying a weapon or being in a fight. Researchers found the strongest associations were related to mood and self- harm. Those who slept less than six hours were more than three times as likely to consider or attempt suicide, and four times as likely to attempt suicide, resulting in treatment. Only 30 percent of the students in the study reported averaging more than eight hours of sleep on school nights."

Seems like a lot of data mining to create correlations (hence the use of the word "association" a lot). This kind of work can be good for problem finding and hypothesis generation. It's unfortunate that we live in a world where:

- news outlets publish research that is meant to stimulate discussion + hypothesis exploration

- readers are unable, undereducated, and / or disempowered to discern the level of rigorous science examination done

EDIT: The funny thing is that I predict that this HN thread will lead hundreds of folks to tell stories of confirmation bias.

4 comments

Nearly every morning one of our local radio station gives "fun" "facts" and always start with "Scientist say " and end with something ridiculous like "dogs can't look up", or "purple is the best colour", or something equally bizarre, and they treat it like because "scientists" say it it has meaning or value, and then they both discuss it as a fact, and have people phone in and talk about it. We utterly fail at scientific education and communication in North America.

I’m not sure if it’s only NA though... just read the chapter 6 “Authority” of Cialdinis book “Influence”. People take stuff that authorities like scientists say as given. It’s human nature. The example of how this can be abused as outlined in the book are quite bizarre.

Oh, yeah, I just didn't want to generalize farther than my own experience.

I wonder if this is CBC Radio 2 Drive. If not, there must be a daily syndicated list available to radio stations to have for banter between actual content.

> EDIT: The funny thing is that I predict that this HN thread will lead hundreds of folks to tell stories of confirmation bias.

Good reply, but why rush to label potential replies as confirmation bias? That simply makes your reply more subjectively problematic. For all we know, the causation is really there. We just have no idea, for the exact reasons you've posted. It's ok to throw potential causes around.

The leverage point in a reply like yours is in getting people to interpret those replies with more clarity, which should not be confused with getting people to label a bunch of personal anecdotes as confirmation bias.

> subjectively problematic

I might recommend using a word more specific than "problematic" if your goal is to communicate your criticism. It's about as specific as "bad", and seems to form an in-group out-group dynamic for readers who get to fill in the gaps.

I agree with your point, so I've read your comment as "it makes your reply more biased than necessary", whereas people who disagree with you might read it as "I don't like your reply because it hurts my feelings" or some other uncharitable interpretation.

Hope this came across as a friendly recommendation! Communicating over text has so many pitfalls.

> The funny thing is that I predict that this HN thread will lead hundreds of folks to tell stories of confirmation bias.

Confirmation bias looks like on-topic content, and often spurs copycat posts that look like engagement. It's one of the faster ways of growing the number next to your user name in the upper right, which causes a dopamine release in most users.

>Those who slept less than six hours were more than three times as likely to consider or attempt suicide, and four times as likely to attempt suicide, resulting in treatment.

Considering that insomnia is a common symptom of depression, this really shouldn't be remotely surprising

Edit: I'd bet you'd find a similar correlation with students that sleep more than 12 hours a day too

Sleeping too much is also a common symptom of depression, as the user abuses sleep to escape their life.

For serious depression issues, I'm not sure 'abuse' is appropriate here...

The inability to _want_ to do anything or _care_ often isn't a conscious choice.

Not to mention that depression often makes people feel physically tired all the time. I don't think someone with normal neurochemistry even could sleep 16 hours a day if they wanted to.

"Abuse" is Newspeak, it means "abnormal use". When depression causes you to sleep to avoid life situations, it could even be called addiction.

That's precisely what I meant in my edit

Or...uses sleep to reduce the inflammation of the brain, thus treating (the symptoms of?) depression?