Talk:Sleep debt

Merge when Fixed
If this article is fixed up, I believe it should be merged with Sleep deprivation (but certainly not in its current state.) If not, the title should perhaps be changed to "Sleep deficit."
 * I think this is a sufficiently different topic to warrant a separate article. Both sleep debt and sleep deficit are commonly used to describe it from my experience. --Sydius (talk) 15:36, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Source Questionable
This article seems to be mostly lifted from a single other source - in addition, I believe the scientific validity of the content can be disputed.
 * I'd say to, some people certainly can go for as long as they like without sleeping. Mathmo 13:55, 1 May 2006 (UTC)


 * "There is debate among researchers as to whether the concept of sleep debt exists."
 * This is an absolutely horrible sentence. The concept itself clearly exists, even if the subject of the concept does not.  If the concept did not exist, nobody could discuss it.  I fixed it in the article. --75.173.75.86 (talk) 03:05, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Short term sleep debt
Can you need more sleep if you've been awake longer? For example, a normal adult needs 8 hours of sleep for every 16 they've been awake (assuming normal casual activity, and not hard labor, etc), but what if the adult had been awake, 30 or 40 hours straight, would they need more than 8? The snare (talk) 00:48, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Scientific Studies?
I've searched for "Sleep Debt" and found many online articles that mention it, but I haven't been able to find any scientific studies. I think the validity of this article is in doubt without scientific references. I have also heard that sleep debt doesn't exist, so if anyone has any information on studies and experiments I believe they would be of great use to this article. Mixx 19:19, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

A quick search on scholar.google.com brought up dozens of refrences. --69.160.28.71 23:15, 9 January 2006 (UTC)


 * See my comment in the Neutrality section. William C. Dement is a research at Stanford Med School who has spent his career studying sleep.  He's done a good deal of research on sleep debt which would be a good resource for this article if someone were willing to do the legwork and dig into it.  It's a theory that definitely has scientific backing, though there is naturally disagreement on certain aspects of it, like if sleep debt persists indefinitely or can accumulate beyond a certain point.  Here's his bio: http://med.stanford.edu/profiles/William_Dement/  Mmurdock 23:18, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Scientific Acceptance of Sleep Debt
There is debate among researchers as to whether there is such a thing as sleep debt. The Sept 2004 issue of the journal Sleep (not available on-line) contained dueling editorials from two of the world's leading sleep researchers: David F Dinges and Jim Horne. The popular understanding that sleep debt can be accumulated indefinitely (over 20 hours) is clearly wrong and not accepted by the scientists. However, some feel that there is a sleep debt that can amount to under 20 hours. I think it is worth keeping this article in Wikipedia, but it should be apparent that sleep debt is not fully acknowledged by the medical establishment. Carax June 25, 2005


 * The article doesn't present this debate; it only gives one point of view, and presents as facts this set of ideas which as a whole do not seem to be very widely accepted. --Mysidia (talk) 03:00, 27 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Found a copy of Jim Horne's portion of the Sleep article, present here: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/hu/groups/sleep/pubsumsb.htm#number12

Why should scientific evidence be the only acceptable evidence? If we are going to talk about Neutrality, then in a world where the majority of it's population believes in some form of faith, should we accept more than scientific evidence as proof? Or less? Perhaps "scientific evidence" is but one type of evidence, or not evidence at all?
 * Certainly this is a joke. Evidence IS scientific or it isn't evidence at all. The article can sputter all day about what the widely-held belief is, but it shouldn't make the claim that anything it says is factual or proven, only that it is a widely-held belief. A scant few hundred years ago, most people believed the Sun went around the Earth, but that didn't make it true. NPOV doesn't mean you give up all your intellectual standards.

The link above to "a copy of Jim Horne's portion of the Sleep article" now gives a 404. It would be valuable if someone could find the whole debate online! Thanks --Hordaland (talk) 21:00, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Scientific Backing
A quick Google Scholar search for "sleep debt" reveals a number of relevant scientific studies. Perhaps some of these could be referenced.

"Typically, for every two hours awake, the average person accumulates a little more than one hour of sleep debt."
Isn't that just a more confusing way to say the average person needs 8 hours of sleep per 24-hour day?
 * Generally in life, and especially scientific research you use the smallest common denominator. You don't say 12/24ths you say 1/2.
 * Well, actually I'd say that this is a better way of saying that approaches such as biphasic and polyphasic sleep are legitimate in some respects. That is, you don't necessarily need 8 hours of sleeping in a single block, which is implied when most people say such. Usurper 05:41, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
 * No, it isnt a more confusing way. It says something else entirely. A little more than one hour- not one hour exactly. This tiny difference might mean 9 or 10 hours of sleep, but definitely more than 8.

Neutrality and Contradiction
I just read the article, looking specifically for NPOV and contradicting arguments, and found neither. Furthermore, both tags tell me to check the talk page, and there is NOTHING about it. Can someone remove these tags? Obviously nobody has cared enough to lodge their complaint about POV or Contradictory statements, so the tags should be removed.


 * I don't think it needs the NPOV tag in its current state. --Sydius (talk) 15:37, 9 July 2008 (UTC)


 * They keep popping up between versions, depending on who edits the page. I think it's safer to keep up the neutrality warning in case more pseudoscience makes its way back into the article. However, I just spent a few minutes weeding out the most obvious contradictions and pseudoscience so have taken down the POV warning and added a stub marker. If the article reverts back to its earlier state, I think the POV warning should go back up.


 * It seems to me that the POV issues of this article lie in the presentation of a clearly debatable topic as scientific fact. The article appears almost as an ongoing debate between a proponent and a critic of the theory. In short, this is just a poorlly written article. If someone want to undertake the task, I suggest a dramatic rewrite of the article as a whole, stressing citation of primary literature. Don't look at me though, I'm too lazy to even sign in right now. On that note, please sign your comments with " ~ " - User:Shaggorama 09:24, 25 September 2006 (UTC)


 * If someone's willing to do the legwork (I don't have time right now), Dr. William C. Dement (yep, that's his real name) at Stanford Medical School has done a vast amount of pioneering research on sleep during his career. He taught an extremely popular undergraduate course when I was there called Sleep and Dreams, and I know that he's done research on sleep debt, though I haven't read any of it in depth, and given his clear authority on the subject, I'm sure his publications would be an excellent resource for this article for anyone willing to dig around a little.  Here's his bio: http://med.stanford.edu/profiles/William_Dement/ " ~ " - User:mmurdock 18 July, 2007

Sentence removed
"Some also suggest that the quality of sleep can have an effect on the level of one's sleep debt." was removed from the article today. It is probably true, and a source should be found. (The worse your apnea, the longer you sleep and the sleepier you are in the daytime.) --Hordaland (talk) 23:40, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Remove or Modify Section?
''In one study, subjects were tested using the psychomotor vigilance task (Von Dongen et al., 2003, as cited in Walker, 2009). Different groups of people were tested with variable sleep times for two weeks: 8 hours, 6 hours, 4 hours, and total sleep deprivation. Each day they were tested for the number of lapses on the PVT. The results showed that as time went by, each group's performance worsened, with no sign of any stopping point. Another observation was that even just 6 hours of sleep a night was detrimental; people who slept 6 hours a night for 10 days had similar results to those who were completely sleep deprived for 1 day. This study gives further evidence of sleep debt, where the negative effects are shown to accumulate over time with less sleep.''

I think this section needs to be removed or have one or more additional citations added. The only citation on this entire paragraph is currently a lecture given to an undergraduate class at a university. However, there's no real way to actually verify the content. I think it would be much better if the actual study could be cited, rather than a lecture that purportedly included this information. Bobman52 (talk) 22:58, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Might it be this one? http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1446-9235.2003.00006.x/full  --Hordaland (talk) 01:40, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

What's more, it's not even clear what the section means: do all three groups (8/6/4 hours of sleep) decline in performance as time goes by? If so, why is this notable? If not, what's the difference between the three groups? Piojo (talk) 03:33, 13 November 2012 (UTC)