That articles take the mountains of evidence that changing schedules is terrible for our health, and misrepresents it as evidence that switching to permanent DST would be bad for our health.
There are tons of terrible norms in our schedules that are harmful for people's health, but switching the clock around twice a year simply confounds and complicates any attempts to fix them. For example:
> To counter chronic sleep deprivation in students, many schools have delayed their morning start times—in effect, moving the school clock back. But DST negates this move for five months of the school year. Year-round DST would negate it all year.
If we switched to permanent DST, high-schools could just push start times back one more hour, and students could consistently get the benefit year-round.
As the article makes very clear, the problem isn’t the change, but DST not aligning with circadian rhythms. DST is fundamentally hostile to human health. The entire second half of the article, starting just before the section labeled “Time Out of Time,” goes into the science on this. Conclusions:
“‘It’s not one hour twice a year. It’s a misalignment of our biologic clocks for eight months of the year,’ says Beth Ann Malow, professor of neurology and pediatrics at Vanderbilt University.”
“The American Academy of Sleep Medicine published a position statement on the subject in October. ‘Permanent, year-round standard time is the best choice to most closely match our circadian sleep-wake cycle,’ said lead author M. Adeel Rishi, a specialist at the Mayo Clinic.”
> It’s a misalignment of our biological clocks for eight months of the year
Hahaha, that’s not a thing. First of all, entrainment happens in a matter of days (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrainment_(chronobiology)). This is why you can move across the country, or just fly to Europe for a vacation, and be on the new schedule after just a few nights there. Nobody has jet lag for eight months when flying to the other side of the planet twelve time zones away. The idea that a one hour shift stays with you forever is just hyperbole, don’t fall for it.
It’s also silly to say you’re out of sync for the longer duration of the year. You spend more time there, so if being out of sync for months at a time was a thing (and it’s not) then it would be out of sync for four months, not eight, because the longer duration is the baseline because it’s longer.
Our biological clocks and circadian rhythms are driven by light. We’d be rising with the sun if it weren’t for all our iPads and streetlights and other artificial light. The changes to and from DST put us closer to rising with the sun. It’s a blunt tool, however staying on the same time all year would be further away, causing a larger misalignment.
Anyway, many people’s typical weekly bedtimes and wake up times varies by more than 1 hour. There’s a term called “social jet lag” which is the discrepancy between your weekend sleep patterns and your mid-week work sleep patterns. It’s pretty common for that to be two or three hours. The effect of DST one hour twice a year is relatively in the noise.
Sleep experts who have education in the area and study for a living seem to overwhelmingly disagree with what you're saying. There is extensive discussion of the issues in the linked article, with inline links to sources.
Half of the “sleep experts” you’re referring to are the group known as SRBR. Their position paper comes up every time Daylight Savings is discussed on Hacker News. About a year ago, I was curious and read the position paper and followed up on a bunch of the references in the paper, reading the sources too.
I found pretty conclusive evidence of exactly what @strbean said: the “evidence” here is using scientific data about other health problems and just assuming that they apply to DST. I don’t know if they’re wrong or right, but they are absolutely overstating their claims. This group has an agenda, and they have allowed their agenda to compromise their scientific integrity.
In fact, reading the sources of SRBR’s position paper is where I learned about “social jet lag”. One of the first citations in the paper talks about how severe social jet lag (time changes by more than 2 hours per week) is associated with higher rates of diabetes. The SRBR paper cites this as conclusive evidence that the DST time change is harmful, without discussion.
A single populist news article referencing people with an agenda does not amount to overwhelming consensus, so don’t get suckered by people who’s argument sounds good to you, it may be specious. Note that several of the papers in the article are written by overlapping authors. This article gave you a lot of scientific sounding links to read, but the number of groups it represents is smaller than the number of links, the links are not all independent bits of evidence.
Please don’t take my word for it, please go through the same exercise I did and follow up on SRBR’s references and ask yourself the same question - do their citations support the claims they are making? Maybe you’ll come to a different conclusion, but it looks clear to me that people are painting a picture of scientific authority to support a strong conclusion that the research does not actually back up with data.
What sort of agenda are you accusing the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms, which appears to be a well-regarded professional organization that publishes a high-impact academic journal, of having?
It's not my opinion or an accusation that they have an agenda to show DST is bad, they have published this fact. You can read their "talking points" here:
The problem is not the existence of an agenda, the problem is that the agenda is too strong and is being allowed to cloud the science. It looks to me like the authors of the position paper have decided (and stated) that DST time changes are bad, ahead of the evidence that justifies this position. It appears that the certainty of their claims in the position paper is much higher than the evidence they cite can actually support.
My claim here is easily verifiable, please just go read some of the sources they cite in the position paper, and verify for yourself whether the citation is warranted and whether it really backs up the claims that are being made in the context of the citation.
I have provided some specific citations that I have trouble with in the HN links above. It's not necessary to inspect those specifically, but I offer them as easy things you could check in just a few minutes of followup work.
There are tons of terrible norms in our schedules that are harmful for people's health, but switching the clock around twice a year simply confounds and complicates any attempts to fix them. For example:
> To counter chronic sleep deprivation in students, many schools have delayed their morning start times—in effect, moving the school clock back. But DST negates this move for five months of the school year. Year-round DST would negate it all year.
If we switched to permanent DST, high-schools could just push start times back one more hour, and students could consistently get the benefit year-round.