[boringds]

In Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker there is a fascinating chapter about how teenagers are biologically programmed to sleep later and wake up later as well. He then explains that basically sending teenagers to school early in the morning is terrible health-wise and prevents optimal brain development.

Anecdata of course but I remember much like you being extremely sleepy at school all day and sleeping a lot on weekends.

[AuthorizedCust]

I would hesitate at using that book. Riddled with errors or non-factual stuff. Been discussed previously here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21546850

[maximus-decimus]

I bought the latest version and he seems to have addressed the problems brought up there.

All books are gonna have errors especially in their first version. Doesn't mean it's better to just never read anything about any subject.

[lozenge]

It's not really a case of typos or the odd error, more like a disinterest in the truth and a preference to just write a narrative and sprinkling fake citations to make it look scientific.

Just the first person to really review it, found 15 major errors and inaccuracies in the first chapter, and gave up due to the time it would take to review the rest of the book.

On top of that, the author doubles down when called out, and doesn't want to discuss any of the actual details or admit any errors or misrepresentations, like cutting data out of a graph when it would give readers a different conclusion than the text.

Some of the errors are positively dangerous, like claiming that the recommended number of hours of sleep is 8, instead of the true figure of 7-9.

"I spent more than 130 hours over the last 2 months researching and writing this essay (~5 hours to write the outline; ~60 hours to get to the first draft; ~65 hours to edit and fact-check), which constituted essentially all of my surplus free time over this time period. Continuing at the same pace, it would take me more than 3,000 hours to check the entire book. 3,000 hours is the equivalent of 75 weeks or 1.4 years of full-time work."

[sergers]

I bought the original.

It's a good read but yea the guy wrote in depth into false claims , and only changed what he wrote based on pushback in a new book.

I chalk it up to more than just errors.

His new book "new science..." This "science" was available at time of his original publishing of first version