> These are the kinds of articles that give science a bad name, and that make people anti-science.

No, it is attitude like yours that brings humanity a bad name.

"Blue light effects" have always had highly questionable evidence behind it, what has been sold and marketed under the guise of it has had _zero_ evidence behind it. But now that you are reminded that it is actually bullshit, you react with skepticism.

"Feels good to me" is hardly evidence to begin with. It's something that is even more flimsy than sociology. I have my doubts it should even be called medicine.

You have to remember that a shitton of people day after day "show" "evidence" that homeopathy works. Even though it has no plausible mechanism of action. So clear mechanism of action is about as important as the evidence itself. (see Science-based medicine)

I could understand (not justify) skepticism in many cases (such as "common wisdom" from 1000 years ago) but this particular topic should have raised your skepticism 20 years ago back when the craze/marketing stunt was starting, and not now.

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crazygringo 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> "Feels good to me" is hardly evidence to begin with

Where did I say anything like that? Please don't mischaracterize my comment, that's not helpful. It's not that it "feels good", it's that it helps at least some people fall asleep more easily, and I know this from personal experience. And many, many other people have written that it does the same for them.

> "Blue light effects" have always had highly questionable evidence behind it... But now that you are reminded that it is actually bullshit

You're right that the evidence for it is questionable. But you know what else there's no conclusive evidence for? That hot herbal tea helps you fall asleep. Or soothing music. Or bedtime stories. Because the funding usually isn't there to perform the kind of large-scale studies required to establish these things, because it's just not a priority or even a good use of our dollars. And lack of evidence for, is not the same as evidence against.

My point is, nothing in this article does establish that it is "actually bullshit". That's a gross misreading of the science, and that's what I'm criticizing the article over.

People experiment with things and discover what works and what doesn't. Again, nobody's going around complaining that there's no scientific evidence lullabyes don't help put you to sleep. And neither lullabyes, nor turning your lights down to amber, have anything to do with homeopathy. You can't possibly suggest they're doing harm. People aren't using amber lighting at night instead of getting their cancer treated.

But for some reason, low amber lighting to help with sleep makes you and the article author upset? Why? Why does that make you upset, but not hot tea or lullabyes? Or do those make you upset too?

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AshamedCaptain 2 hours ago | parent [-]

"feels good to me" and "helps me sleep more easily" are about the same thing: flimsy and almost non-quantifiable personal experiences. About the same level with "I dream of nicer things".

> And many, many other people have written that it does the same for them.

So people write for homeopathy. Homepathy actually is the precursor for using this type of "evidence" for development and study of new "drugs" (hint: this evidence ends up going nowhere useful, quickly).

> Or soothing music. Or bedtime stories. Because the funding usually isn't there to perform the kind of large-scale studies required to establish these things, because it's just not a priority or even a good use of our dollars.

Oh, there is. There are way more studies about this than you can possibly think of. There are medical journals reporting clinical experiences about this daily. You are saying this on an article about study about one of these, ironically enough.

> And lack of evidence for, is not the same as evidence against.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

> My point is, nothing in this article does establish that it is "actually bullshit".

Why not?

> But for some reason, low amber lighting to help with sleep makes you and the article author upset? Why? Why does that make you upset, but not hot tea or lullabyes? Or do those make you upset too?

You are the one who suddenly claims this makes people "anti-science", when this particular bullshit is not even 20 years old, and it was already known to be suspect 20 years ago. It is just ridiculous that it is now suddenly such a core belief of your persona that even being reminded that it is most likely bullshit is going to drive you to reject science outright.

As I said, I could at least _understand_ (but not justify) much older claims, such as ancient chinese practices or whatever. This makes they make me upset indeed (this is pseudoscience, after all), but what makes me even more upset is the creation of new pseudo-scientific or even anti-scientific "popular wisdom" _in this age_.

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crazygringo 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I think you have not actually understood what I wrote, because of this part:

>> My point is, nothing in this article does establish that it is "actually bullshit".

> Why not?

I've already said it multiple times. Allow me to repeat myself:

> make the elemental mistake that showing one biological mechanism doesn't have an effect, means no other mechanisms can either.

You've written a lot, but you haven't understood that this is the core mistake of the article, and the core mistake of what you're trying to argue.

You reply with a reference to Russell's teapot, and that would be fine if you were merely trying to make the point that the effect of amber light on sleep has not been sufficiently proven. But you're the one literally calling it "bullshit", i.e. disproven. That's wrong. There's no high-quality study conclusively demonstrating it doesn't have an effect.

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AshamedCaptain 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Certainly you can claim that because not all mechanisms have been disproven yet, then there could still be an effect. That is why I quote Russell's teapot. Your claims are technically not disproven, and may not even be possible to disprove, but that doesn't mean that the existence of the teapot is (most definitely) bullshit. This is what the example of Russell's teapot is trying to show.

I also keep continuously putting the example of homeopathy because it is exactly the same. Homeopathy has plenty of (weak) evidence, but no known mechanism of action. All the proposed religious, memory of water, etc. have been disproved. Certainly you can argue that homeopathy could still be a thing because there could be some physical/biological mechanism that has not yet been disproved! But this is just nitpicking: homeopathy is still bullshit. In the same way that a teapot in space is bullshit.

Anything else is a (useless) nitpick.

In any case, even from day #1 it's been known that blue light could possibly have a mechanism, but there's always been a big stretch from there to claiming that blue light filters/night shift have an effect, and the evidence for the latter is substantially lacking. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/blue-light/

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crazygringo an hour ago | parent [-]

I'm sorry, but using the idea of Russell's teapot to claim anything without rock-solid proof is "bullshit" is a deep misunderstanding of the idea. It's wrong, it's offensive, and it's not helpful to genuine understanding.

Amber light is not Russell's teapot. There's widespread anecdotal reporting that it helps with sleep. It's not something nonsensical like a teapot between Earth and Mars. And for you to suggest that they're the equivalent is, frankly, arguing in bad faith.

The world of knowledge is not divided, black-and-white, between things that are scientifically proven and "bullshit". Probably the vast majority of practical facts we rely on daily are not "proven" with empirical studies. That doesn't make them "bullshit". I hope you can understand that.

	▲	AshamedCaptain an hour ago \| parent [-]
		No, I do not understand why I cannot call homeopathy bullshit. There's plenty of widespread positive anecdote for it, too! Why would you think calling one bullshit is "offensive" and not the other? You realize that this "gray" scale that you claim is as unscientific as it gets, right? After all, it worked for me! And I hear that it works for my friends! How can homeopathy/blue light filters/whatever-ritual-you-like-today not work? How can there not be a teapot on the sky? If the problem is with the word "bullshit", call it pseudo-scientific, but it is almost the same thing. Tomorrow there could be some evidence of an effect shown in the opposite direction (e.g. blue light filters _harming_ sleep quality, or performance the day after, or whatever) and you would be as skeptical as with claims of no effect, if not more. See the recent article of white noise in HN and how it was met in the comments. Because of people (or worse, software) turning their screens' brightness up to compensate, which I already read an article about long time ago...

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chuckadams 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Someone says that other psychological factors (which have physical effects) help them sleep and they "bring humanity a bad name"?

Maybe think on that a little bit.

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AshamedCaptain 3 hours ago | parent [-]

No, he said "this gives science a bad name"/"makes people anti-science" because some article published something that contradicts his anecdote of how well he thinks he sleeps. That gives humanity a bad name. And your direct insults do, too (which fortunately have been edited out).

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chuckadams 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The direct insult where I said "touch some fucking grass"?

I certainly stand by it now.

	▲	IAmBroom 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Why? You're proud of your insults?