alt Hacker NewsA lot of comments here dismiss the study for having a small N.
Exploratory research uses small N at the start. This kind of research can have value even if it is not conclusive.
Imagine the expense (and dominance of Big Research) if every study needed 100,000 participants to run.
If you don’t want to read exploratory studies, ignore them when they hit the headline news.
Other criticisms of this study (e.g., participants didn’t previously sleep with noise) seem more on the mark. I’m not an uncritical fan.
Bashing studies for having now N is common because it’s the easiest thing for non-scientists to criticize when they don’t like a study’s findings.
Scientists, on the other hand, know that low N does not necessarily reduce the validity or the value of a study.