Bright sunshiny day
Q: Isn’t Study suggests we need this first-thing in the morning a perfect example of click-bait?
A: Impressive. And what is this?
Q: This is daylight.
A: Makes sense. And fits with the picture of someone stretching after getting out of bed.
Q: Does it fit the research?
A: Um. Not so much. (link)
Q: Not people?
A: No, it was people. It’s just it was light exposure in office buildings.
Q: And these buildings weren’t where people slept?
A: No, that would be potentially inappropriate. It was where they worked.
Q: But giving people more light helped with sleep and depression?
A: “the study did not include a lighting intervention”
Q: So they compared people who had offices with windows and natural light to everyone else?
A: Basically.
Q: And there was a difference in how much sleep they got?
A: No.
Q: In whether they woke up a lot?
A: Not really. The ‘sleep efficiency’ was pretty much the same.
Q: In what, then?
A: In how long they took to fall asleep.
Q: And the depression and stress?
A: Well, the differences were statistically detectable, but they weren’t all that big.
Q: But wouldn’t you expect people with windows in their offices to be happier?
A: Yes. It’s a bit surprising how small the differences were in this study.
Q: So the headline is a bit exaggerated?
A: It’s worse than that. The headline says the research is about what you should have been doing, but it’s actually about what your employer should be doing.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »