I read through the material you linked — all of it relating to this group “SRBR” — and I find the degree of certainty in your message and in SRBR’s position paper to be curious, because the research cited here doesn’t actually seem to support strong claims about the difference between standard time and daylight savings time, and the position paper seems to be making some rather exaggerated claims.
For example, I followed several of the citations that the position paper claims to show that daylight savings time changes cause measurable negative health effects. Koopman et al showed that social jet lag is associated with higher diabetes rates. This is people who change sleep patterns by more than 2 hours every week. It’s pure unsupported assumption to imply that the switch to daylight savings time twice a year shares these effects. Same goes for Haraszti. Hafner et al studied problems of lack of enough sleep in general, there is no connection to the twice yearly time change.
It only takes a few of these to start smelling agenda, and see clearly that the “plenty of footnotes” pile of evidence is being made to appear larger than it really is. I don’t really get why though. I’d be happy not switching times, but I have good reason now to be skeptical of this research’s claims that there are large measurable differences between settling on standard vs daylight time. Why are you sure that standard time is somehow better, and what does it mean to you?
For example, I followed several of the citations that the position paper claims to show that daylight savings time changes cause measurable negative health effects. Koopman et al showed that social jet lag is associated with higher diabetes rates. This is people who change sleep patterns by more than 2 hours every week. It’s pure unsupported assumption to imply that the switch to daylight savings time twice a year shares these effects. Same goes for Haraszti. Hafner et al studied problems of lack of enough sleep in general, there is no connection to the twice yearly time change.
It only takes a few of these to start smelling agenda, and see clearly that the “plenty of footnotes” pile of evidence is being made to appear larger than it really is. I don’t really get why though. I’d be happy not switching times, but I have good reason now to be skeptical of this research’s claims that there are large measurable differences between settling on standard vs daylight time. Why are you sure that standard time is somehow better, and what does it mean to you?