It's clear to me that perhaps it was also that the experts understanding of the science that was wrong as well. Therefore perhaps these "scams" weren't scams but a product developed based on science that was promoted and later corrected.
In the linkedin post where the team unveiled their documentary they quote the involvement of the author of Why We Sleep (great book) and the decades of sleep research, who in their famous book actually did say that blue light impacts melatonin and is crucial for sleep, he even promoted blue light blocking filters. He later retracted that statement and changed his stance.
So were bluelight blocking glasses a scam, or perhaps a product that was informed by a misunderstanding of science. If I read a book based on a renowned sleep scientist who promoted blue light filters and I made glasses to help block blue light, if that understanding of science changed, am I a scammer?
If this is in fact true then this goes against any product or feature that markets reducing blue light such as not to impact sleep. Extending to include Apples marketing of Night Shift.
I'm not a huge fan of Dr Walker, and we actually compete with the company he is a "co-founder" of, but I think saying he committed research misconduct is going a bit far.
Misconduct is probably overstating it, and he wrote a popular book, which increased awareness of sleep health.
The thing is that there is such an enormous amount of research in this area regarding blue light and its impact on melatonin. So I am quite surprised its considered a scam, for over a decade and even when I went to University did a subject on sleep psychology it was believed that blue light impacted melatonin, which impacted sleep, either directly or indirectly.
Unless I am misunderstanding this, this goes against almost every area in which we recommended reducing blue light. Heck Apple market it with their Night Shift function "Studies have shown that exposure to bright blue light in the evening can affect your circadian rhythms and make it harder to fall asleep."
However I agree if you continue to market a product after knowing better than its a scam. But can you also trust the evidence that backtracks science we have considered to be true for so long. You could understand peoples skepticism initially to it being bogus.
You are correct that blue-light impacts melatonin.
This brought people to two conclusions which were proven wrong long ago.
1) the drop in melatonin delays sleep onset, or disrupts sleep
2) wearing blue-light blocking glasses prevents this drop in melatonin.
Bright lights decrease melatonin, the decrease is not large enough to have a significant impact on sleep. Therefore, the blocking of blue-light is unnecessary, and it has never been shown to have an impact on melatonin either.
I've always suspected this was mostly nonsense, although not entirely. Even more ridiculous are the blue tinted "gamer glasses", which completely alter the color rendering of the monitor while you are pumping yourself full of adrenaline in video games as you prepare for bed...
I had never thought about it before, but game designers put so much effort into perfecting the color and rendering of games. I wonder if they take blue-blocking glasses into account.
I'm imagining gamers spending thousands of dollars on the perfect colour reproducing monitor, only to then change the colour with blue-blockers.
> I'm imagining gamers spending thousands of dollars on the perfect colour reproducing monitor, only to then change the colour with blue-blockers.
Why would that be so strange? It might be that they want a high performing monitor with high refresh rates and good color production, but don't want the monitors blue light impacting their sleep late at night, so they wear the glasses at night knowing it will reduce the quality of what they see.
Yes, but my response to you was in relation to your comment. That I don't think it would be unreasonable for someone to spend a lot of money on a good monitor and still use glasses at night that might alter the color of said monitor if they thought it benefited their health. Afterall, there has been enormous evidence saying they did benefit you, it's only now its coming to light it might have been poor science.
Furthermore, yes monitor companies do develop monitors with blue light in mind, for example Asus has a low blue light filter certification on some of its monitors which is independently certified by TUV, of which TUV claims can help reduce sleep disruptions due to blue light. Based on this doco, that claim is also debunked.
It's not even about sleep anymore. That was what f.lux's intent was back when the research first came out, but now it's been morphed by people trying to sell these glasses into "blue light is harmful". They talk about it like your eyes are getting damaged by blue light. Or that it's defending against eye strain caused by blue light rather than just overall luminance.
> They talk about it like your eyes are getting damaged by blue light.
I think this is somewhat reasonable, since the issue is that the UV comes from, specifically, shitty light sources that are attempting to make blue bits of the spectrum (led and fluorescent).
It's clear to me that perhaps it was also that the experts understanding of the science that was wrong as well. Therefore perhaps these "scams" weren't scams but a product developed based on science that was promoted and later corrected.
In the linkedin post where the team unveiled their documentary they quote the involvement of the author of Why We Sleep (great book) and the decades of sleep research, who in their famous book actually did say that blue light impacts melatonin and is crucial for sleep, he even promoted blue light blocking filters. He later retracted that statement and changed his stance.
So were bluelight blocking glasses a scam, or perhaps a product that was informed by a misunderstanding of science. If I read a book based on a renowned sleep scientist who promoted blue light filters and I made glasses to help block blue light, if that understanding of science changed, am I a scammer?
If this is in fact true then this goes against any product or feature that markets reducing blue light such as not to impact sleep. Extending to include Apples marketing of Night Shift.
You may be interested to read that the Why We Sleep guy committed research misconduct in the book. Guy is totally unrepentant about it.
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/03/24/why-we-sle...
I'm not a huge fan of Dr Walker, and we actually compete with the company he is a "co-founder" of, but I think saying he committed research misconduct is going a bit far.
Misconduct is probably overstating it, and he wrote a popular book, which increased awareness of sleep health.
That's a fair point, but there never was evidence for blue-light blocking glasses, and that is what scientific rigor requires.
If you continue to shill the blue-light blocking glasses when it is known that they do not do anything, then yes, you're a scammer.
The thing is that there is such an enormous amount of research in this area regarding blue light and its impact on melatonin. So I am quite surprised its considered a scam, for over a decade and even when I went to University did a subject on sleep psychology it was believed that blue light impacted melatonin, which impacted sleep, either directly or indirectly.
Unless I am misunderstanding this, this goes against almost every area in which we recommended reducing blue light. Heck Apple market it with their Night Shift function "Studies have shown that exposure to bright blue light in the evening can affect your circadian rhythms and make it harder to fall asleep."
However I agree if you continue to market a product after knowing better than its a scam. But can you also trust the evidence that backtracks science we have considered to be true for so long. You could understand peoples skepticism initially to it being bogus.
You are correct that blue-light impacts melatonin.
This brought people to two conclusions which were proven wrong long ago.
1) the drop in melatonin delays sleep onset, or disrupts sleep
2) wearing blue-light blocking glasses prevents this drop in melatonin.
Bright lights decrease melatonin, the decrease is not large enough to have a significant impact on sleep. Therefore, the blocking of blue-light is unnecessary, and it has never been shown to have an impact on melatonin either.
A bit of a tangent, but I laughed hard at the lampoon of this in the latest Aunty Donna sketch: https://youtu.be/aq0rCxLOVhU?t=215
I've always suspected this was mostly nonsense, although not entirely. Even more ridiculous are the blue tinted "gamer glasses", which completely alter the color rendering of the monitor while you are pumping yourself full of adrenaline in video games as you prepare for bed...
I had never thought about it before, but game designers put so much effort into perfecting the color and rendering of games. I wonder if they take blue-blocking glasses into account.
I'm imagining gamers spending thousands of dollars on the perfect colour reproducing monitor, only to then change the colour with blue-blockers.
> I'm imagining gamers spending thousands of dollars on the perfect colour reproducing monitor, only to then change the colour with blue-blockers.
Why would that be so strange? It might be that they want a high performing monitor with high refresh rates and good color production, but don't want the monitors blue light impacting their sleep late at night, so they wear the glasses at night knowing it will reduce the quality of what they see.
You are aware that the original post was about how blue-light blocking glasses are scam, right?
Yes, but my response to you was in relation to your comment. That I don't think it would be unreasonable for someone to spend a lot of money on a good monitor and still use glasses at night that might alter the color of said monitor if they thought it benefited their health. Afterall, there has been enormous evidence saying they did benefit you, it's only now its coming to light it might have been poor science.
Furthermore, yes monitor companies do develop monitors with blue light in mind, for example Asus has a low blue light filter certification on some of its monitors which is independently certified by TUV, of which TUV claims can help reduce sleep disruptions due to blue light. Based on this doco, that claim is also debunked.
I would love to read an article about this.
A 45 minute video does not interest me.
I didn't make the video, just posted it. I did comment on Linkedin
If you want the summary of how the "scam" works, or why it isn't true
Stage 1) research showed that blue-light in mega-doses impacts melatonin levels
Stage 2) ignore that the drop in melatonin has almost zero impact on sleep
Stage 3) sell blue-light blocking glasses, which block blue-light, which we saw in step 2 has no impact on sleep.
Stage 4) profit.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/pedalpete_are-blue-light-bloc...
It's not even about sleep anymore. That was what f.lux's intent was back when the research first came out, but now it's been morphed by people trying to sell these glasses into "blue light is harmful". They talk about it like your eyes are getting damaged by blue light. Or that it's defending against eye strain caused by blue light rather than just overall luminance.
> They talk about it like your eyes are getting damaged by blue light.
I think this is somewhat reasonable, since the issue is that the UV comes from, specifically, shitty light sources that are attempting to make blue bits of the spectrum (led and fluorescent).
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3222423/
All of this is debunked in the documentary above.
This is how I feel about most of YouTube :)