"They're just not aware of how sleepy they are," says Thomas Roth, Ph.D., sleep researcher at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.
I don't mean to disparage the Dr, but how does he know that about those specific people? It seems exceedingly presumptuous to say, basically, that he knows these people whom he has probably never met in person better than they know themselves.
"Wakefulness for 18 hours makes you perform almost as though you're legally drunk," says Walsleben.
This is stated like it is a law of nature, true for all people in all circumstances. Is it though? If I well rested beforehand I know I can go at least 18 hours and still function nominally. "Well, your perception and evaluation of your own performance degrades as well. You just think you are performing nominally." I concede the possibility, but when I look back later (well-rested again) at my work I can only conclude that if the above statement is true then I must be a very high-functioning drunk. Driving particularly is hard to measure outside of a controlled environment--it is easy to over-estimate yourself unless something goes very wrong--but I would be very interested in doing some sort of before and after. Take me when I am well-rested and establish a baseline driving performance. Then take me when I am 18 hours out (after being well-rested, as stated above) and compare the same performance. I would expect to see a drop in performance, but I highly doubt it would be as exaggerated as this claims. I would not presume that I am indicative of the normal population, but I think I would stand as a counter-example to the absolute veracity of that statement.
I am not arguing against moderation in our sleeping patterns, and I am not contesting the results of the many studies published. I just find it hard to swallow when we draw these conclusions and state them like they are universal truths about all people in all circumstances when the reality is that people and circumstances vary far more than the studies account for, especially since we don't really understand the causal relation between sleep and performance.
I am not arguing against moderation in our sleeping patterns, and I am not contesting the results of the many studies published. I just find it hard to swallow when we draw these conclusions and state them like they are universal truths about all people in all circumstances when the reality is that people and circumstances vary far more than the studies account for, especially since we don't really understand the causal relation between sleep and performance.