Hacker News Reader

Comment by oivey | Hacker News Reader

That is a low n, but I’m not sure what the alternative is. Surely random anecdotes (n=1) are even less powerful?

The low n is not the only questionable thing about the study. What a big n gives you is diversity of samples and tighter confidence intervals, but it can not correct for methodological limitations. Specifically, they didn't invite any people with sleep issues or who are already sleeping under noise. Therefore the conclusion is a "duh" - if you don't require pink noise to sleep, then don't add it.

Random anecdotes might be less biased. For example, no pressure to publish nor sell a product.

The alternative is higher n. The study makes a claim, it does not present the evidence necessary to back up that claim. Until someone does a larger study, no conclusion should be drawn.

I'm not inviting you to draw conclusions from my semi-random (but informed by years of professional thought about why people like different sounds) anecdote.

Personally, I trust the results of a sleep study, or any study on anything, by people I don’t know with questionable incentives than I do anecdotes of commenters I’ve been following for 10 years on HN, especially when they align with my own experiences, and conversations I’ve had over beers with people in industry (whatever that might be).

A lot of “science” is junk, not insofar as it’s false, but like water is wet.

Good science: there are compounds in cruciferous vegetables that appear to exert some health benefits.

Junk science: bok choy is green.

If a sleep lab is ignoring the fact of chronotypes (it’s obvious our genetic history would require some people to be predisposed to keep an eye out for toothy clawed things, and dangerous ‘others’) while most of their tribe / community are sleeping), the people who work there do so because it pays the bills, not because they’re passionate about working in the medicine / health industry at all.

I encourage people to get up and walk out if you find yourself at a service provider that doesn’t care about you. Find someone who gives a frak.

Once again, I am not suggesting you generalize from my anecdote. I like the sound of rain and sleep better with it. I have absolutely no idea how widespread this is in the population.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com