What's wrong with "why we Sleep?"
Suggested by Annabel Denham, Associate Director at The Entrepreneurs Network
Alexey Guzey’s analysis of Professor Matthew Walker’s critically acclaimed book Why We Sleep is worth reading. Contrary to Walker’s claims that the shorter you sleep, the shorter your life span, Guzey reveals that most studies on the relationship between life span and sleep duration find a U-shaped relationship between length of sleep and longevity: both short- and long-duration sleep are associated with higher mortality.
Neither will sleeping less than six hours a night double your risk of cancer: “Walker does not cite any studies that support this assertion anywhere in the book.” Nor has the World Health Organisation ever declared a sleep loss epidemic throughout industrialised nations (though if you now Google “WHO” and “sleep loss epidemic” you’ll find results citing, you guessed it, Matthew Walker.
That two-thirds of adults in developed nations fail to obtain the recommended amount of sleep is a conclusion Guzey suggests Walker reached through a series of non-sequiturs. Further, “the quote is empty because the WHO does not stipulate how much an adult should sleep anywhere”.
We should worry less about sleep. Sleep is like a cat, it only comes if you ignore it. Instead, let's heed Guzey’s advice: “as long as you feel good, sleeping anywhere between five and eight hours a night seems basically fine for your health, regardless of whatever Big Sleep wants you to believe”.
Is the rate of scientific progress slowing down?
Suggested by Sam Dumitriu, research director of The Entrepreneurs Network
A new paper by my former colleague Ben Southwood and economist Tyler Cowen suggest it is. Defining and measuring scientific progress is a tricky task, so Southwood and Cowen look at a range of metrics including "productivity growth, total factor productivity, GDP growth, patent measures, researcher productivity, crop yields, life expectancy, and Moore’s Law"
However, their findings aren't so straightforwardly negative. While "a wide variety of “per capita” measures do indeed suggest that various metrics for growth, progress and productivity are slowing down. On the other side of that coin, a no less strong variety of metrics show that measures of total, aggregate progress are usually doing quite well. So the final answer to the progress question likely depends on how we weight per capita rates of progress vs. measures of total progress in the aggregate."
Why child labour beats school
Suggested by Philip Salter, founder of The Entrepreneurs Network
As part of Unherd's radical policies series, Ed West has an article on why child labour beats school.
"Sure, when you put it like that, it sounds a bit… regressive. Perhaps I also think women should be denied the franchise or that MPs should be elected by rotten boroughs? Maybe the return of serfdom?", writes West.
West believes most - perhaps all - children would benefit from working a bit. And he thinks some children could benefit from ditching most of school and working after fourteen.
Referencing economist Bryan Caplan, West suggests schooling is often a costly arms race for credentials and is an overrated part of economic development. Would many teenagers not be better off in a "working environment [that] allows them to interact with adults, adopt adult social norms and learn skills when their brain is rapidly absorbing information?"
West's idea is as big as it will be unpalatable to some. But having sat in classes where some students got precisely nothing out of it - except the daily humiliation of being reminded that they aren't up to scratch (to say nothing about the impact on other children they disrupt), those shocked by West's solution still need to find one or two of their own to solve this policy failure.