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Comment by vacri | Hacker News Reader

But what data is this conclusion based on? One important study by NASA for the most part.

This is bollocks, for the most part. There have been plenty of studies done on naps, powernaps, short term sleeps. When I was going through uni in the 90s, the motor vehicle registry agency in my state was doing a lot of research in the area of powernaps. Later on I spent some time in sleep medicine myself, and studies here and there would filter through. This is not a notion reliant on one study with a small n.

I would have thought that a startup founder who bases his company on the premise of napping would have read more on the topic.

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> This is bollocks, for the most part. There have been plenty of studies... my state was doing a lot of research... studies here and there would filter through... this is not reliant on a single study with a small n.

There is a missing piece of information in your comment. Does this mean the studies you've seen were contradictory? You mention there have been a lot of studies done about the subject but not the results. Can you elaborate on why you reached this conclusion?

I'm genuinely curious about what makes you think so -- the research I've been able to find all seem to corroborate the benefits of napping [1], and I've always been under the impression power naps were effective myself.

I wrote another comment here about how a small n can still produce surprisingly statistically significant results, but besides that it also looks like there are many more than one study on the topic.

> I would have thought that a startup founder who bases his company on the premise of napping would have read more on the topic.

There is no reason to assume this article contains the entirety of the founder's knowledge about the topic. I for one think this write-up makes a much more compelling read than a comprehensive review of the academic literature. Of course, none of this prevents him from selling and marketing his product anyway...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_nap#Benefits

The author is making it sound like the entire notion of the benefit of power naps is based on a single NASA study. This is what I am railing against - it's not one 'landmark' study which suggests the benefits of power naps.

There's also been crossover study of naps and shift workers. The world of scientific napping is not underpinned by one NASA study, not even 'for the most part'.

There is no reason to assume this article contains the entirety of the founder's knowledge about the topic.

Having had minor formal training and then employment in the sleep industry, both as a medical technician and later as an equipment supplier working with in-house clinical specialists in the field, I find it hard to fathom that someone who had a ton of relevant knowledge would characterise the conclusion that 'napping is good for you' as 'coming from one NASA study for the most part'.

But is it, or is not?

I don't understand what you're asking. Are you asking if the studies I've seen are contradictory, like pyduan first said? I thought it was relatively clear when I was saying that the science of napping isn't underpinned by one NASA study that there's more support than one 'landmark' study.

Part of the problem with most other studies are that it is very had to metricize on-the-job performance and sleepiness. Some of the cool things about this study are: 1) very clear metrics to measure performance (reaction time) 2) very consistent testing (repeated trials over an actual 9 hour flight, then over 4 days of additional flights) 3) additional non-subjective metrics for sleepiness (the teams strapped an EEG on the pilots while they were flying to monitor brain activity!!!)

It's frustrating, but most health and wellness magazines are a bit like an echo chamber with no clear references to source data.

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