alt Hacker NewsThese are the kinds of articles that give science a bad name, and that make people anti-science.
You might as well try to claim hot tea doesn't help you get to sleep, or reading before bed doesn't, or whatever else you do to wind down.
I personally don't care if some narrow hypothesis about blue light and melanopsin is false. I know that low, warm, amber-tinted light in the evening slows me down in a way that low, cold, blue-tinted light does not. That's why I use different, warmer lamps at night with dimmers, and keep my devices on Night Shift and lower brightness. It works for me, and seems to mimic the lighting conditions we evolved with -- strong blue light around noon, weaker warmer light at sunset, weakest warmest light from the fire until we go to sleep. Maybe it doesn't work for everybody. That's fine. But it certainly does for me.
And maybe it's not modulated by melanopsin. Or maybe it's not about blue light, but rather the overall correlated color temperature (CCT), e.g. 2100K instead of 5700K. Who knows.
But this type of article is bad science writing. It shows why one hypothesis as to why a warmer color temperature would result in one other physiological change isn't supported. That doesn't mean "blue light filters don't work" as a universal statement. It's hubris on the part of the author to assume that this one hypothesis is the only potential mechanism by which warmer light might help with sleep.
And it's this kind of science writing that turns people off to science. I know, through lots of trial and error and experimentation, that warm light helps me fall asleep. And here comes some "AI researcher and neurotechnologist" trying to tell me I'm wrong? He says it's "aggravating" that people are "actually using Night Shift". I say it's aggravating when people like him make the elemental mistake that showing one biological mechanism doesn't have an effect, means no other mechanisms can either.
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What if these filters also cure cancer by some mechanism that isn't known yet? Who knows, it might be true! After long experimentation with warmer lighting my cancer is gone, so it definitely worked for me.
What you're saying is not science either. The entire medical usage of blue light filters hinges on just a few papers. If you really can prove those studies inapplicable you can prove that there's no objective reason to use them (I'm not necessarily saying the author did that).
Whether these filters feel nice is entirely unrelated question, nobody stops you from decorating your living space as you see fit.
> These are the kinds of articles that give science a bad name, and that make people anti-science.
No, it is attitude like yours that brings humanity a bad name.
"Blue light effects" have always had highly questionable evidence behind it, what has been sold and marketed under the guise of it has had _zero_ evidence behind it. But now that you are reminded that it is actually bullshit, you react with skepticism.
"Feels good to me" is hardly evidence to begin with. It's something that is even more flimsy than sociology. I have my doubts it should even be called medicine.
You have to remember that a shitton of people day after day "show" "evidence" that homeopathy works. Even though it has no plausible mechanism of action. So clear mechanism of action is about as important as the evidence itself. (see Science-based medicine)
I could understand (not justify) skepticism in many cases (such as "common wisdom" from 1000 years ago) but this particular topic should have raised your skepticism 20 years ago back when the craze/marketing stunt was starting, and not now.
> But this type of article is bad science writing. It shows why one hypothesis as to why a warmer color temperature would result in one other physiological change isn't supported
I don't know if I'd even give them that credit (emphasis mine):
> Halving the luminance, at best (around 20 lux baseline) might get you from 50% to 25% melatonin suppression.