Comment by derbOac
4 days ago
The paper is here:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09261-y
Not an expert in this area, but the essay feels a bit like an oversimplification. Not only is this in flies, but I wasn't entirely convinced this isn't about rest rather than sleep per se. It's a cool paper, interesting to read and read about, but my hunch is there's more steps in the chain, and am not sure it will replicate in humans or even mammals. But maybe I'll be wrong.
It is an awful paper and I am a very expert in this area. This is science, alas.
Huh, you actually are an expert in this area. I’m curious to hear more too.
> There, I studied the early stages of neuronal development in the Drosophila embryo… > I graduated with my Ph.D. in September 2006 and decided that I would continue my research activity on sleep, using flies as the animal model.
https://lab.gilest.ro/giorgio
Not an expert, but I’d love to hear more about what makes it awful.
Please elaborate.
The conclusions are pushed and hyperbolic exactly to get this type of reaction from the public, at best conflating control with function (we solved sleep) while the sleep phenotype itself is basically non-existing.
Proper rebuttals will come up in due time on the appropriate channels. all the colleagues I talked to are as pissed off as I am about this way of doing science.
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you are arguably the most educated expert on the subject available on HN. any chance you will share your thoughts on here, your blog or mastodon?