This isn’t as important as my previous reply (in which I address your object-level arguments), but I wanted to perhaps note that most of your points 1.1 through 1.4 sound, to me, more like an attempt to generate an emotional reaction in the reader than a good-faith effort at pointing out mistakes you think I’ve made or investigating object-level disagreements (although I could be wrong). I don’t recall criticizing you for not having an MD or something, or publicly speculating that you have never thought about [important meta-level epistemological consideration].
I understand that the fact that I did not take biology or neuroscience classes in college is evidence that I would not have a good understanding of sleep research, but I think it is perhaps important to keep in mind that argument screens off authority here, and it sounds plausible that, a lot of the time, domain experts in the area would acquire knowledge in it the same way I do (by reading meta-analyses and systematic reviews, or textbooks based on those). They don’t have some sort of magical essence that makes them more knowledgeable than everybody else could become. They do original research, but not in every sub-area of their field. If I saw you explaining to someone why a massless particle can carry energy and momentum if it travels at the speed of light, and you were using the same arguments that convinced me why that was the case, I would not object simply because that (probably) wasn’t part of your formal education, as it was of mine, or because you didn’t talk to a physicist about it.
(I’m also a bit confused about why you are criticizing me for not talking to people in the field if, in your view, those people are mostly untrustworthy and just want to show that sleep deprivation is bad[1]).
Which, in my experience, was not the case — I was able to find many systematic reviews and meta-analyses claiming that sleep deprivation is probably not bad for some things. (For example, blood pressure, inflammation, and mortality, as I’ve pointed out in the post).
a lot of the time, domain experts in the area would acquire knowledge in it the same way I do (by reading meta-analyses and systematic reviews, or textbooks based on those).
Domain experts usually do learn not only from public information. When it comes to the question of whether or not to believe a scientific paper domain experts usually learn the skills from talking with their collegues.
I had one bioinformatics professor who made a point of saying something in every lecture about how we shouldn’t just believe the literature and how there’s a lot of mistaken papers out there.
One of your disagreements with guzey is whether “X is true because a meta-analysis says so” is a reasonable argument.
(I’m also a bit confused about why you are criticizing me for not talking to people in the field if, in your view, those people are mostly untrustworthy and just want to show that sleep deprivation is bad[1]).
Talking to people is a good way to understand how untrustworthy they are.
This isn’t as important as my previous reply (in which I address your object-level arguments), but I wanted to perhaps note that most of your points 1.1 through 1.4 sound, to me, more like an attempt to generate an emotional reaction in the reader than a good-faith effort at pointing out mistakes you think I’ve made or investigating object-level disagreements (although I could be wrong). I don’t recall criticizing you for not having an MD or something, or publicly speculating that you have never thought about [important meta-level epistemological consideration].
I understand that the fact that I did not take biology or neuroscience classes in college is evidence that I would not have a good understanding of sleep research, but I think it is perhaps important to keep in mind that argument screens off authority here, and it sounds plausible that, a lot of the time, domain experts in the area would acquire knowledge in it the same way I do (by reading meta-analyses and systematic reviews, or textbooks based on those). They don’t have some sort of magical essence that makes them more knowledgeable than everybody else could become. They do original research, but not in every sub-area of their field. If I saw you explaining to someone why a massless particle can carry energy and momentum if it travels at the speed of light, and you were using the same arguments that convinced me why that was the case, I would not object simply because that (probably) wasn’t part of your formal education, as it was of mine, or because you didn’t talk to a physicist about it.
(I’m also a bit confused about why you are criticizing me for not talking to people in the field if, in your view, those people are mostly untrustworthy and just want to show that sleep deprivation is bad[1]).
Which, in my experience, was not the case — I was able to find many systematic reviews and meta-analyses claiming that sleep deprivation is probably not bad for some things. (For example, blood pressure, inflammation, and mortality, as I’ve pointed out in the post).
Domain experts usually do learn not only from public information. When it comes to the question of whether or not to believe a scientific paper domain experts usually learn the skills from talking with their collegues.
I had one bioinformatics professor who made a point of saying something in every lecture about how we shouldn’t just believe the literature and how there’s a lot of mistaken papers out there.
One of your disagreements with guzey is whether “X is true because a meta-analysis says so” is a reasonable argument.
Talking to people is a good way to understand how untrustworthy they are.