Matthew Walker | |
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| Born | Matthew Walker 1972 or 1973 (age 51–52)[2] |
| Alma mater | |
| Known for | Why We Sleep |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Sleep[1] |
| Institutions | Harvard University University of California, Berkeley |
| Thesis | A psychophysiological investigation into fluctuating levels of consciousness in neurodegenerative dementia (1999[dead link]) |
| Website | sleepdiplomat |
Matthew Walker is a British author, scientist and professor ofneuroscience andpsychology at theUniversity of California, Berkeley.[1][3][4][5]
As an academic, Walker has focused on the impact of sleep on human health. He has contributed to many scientific research studies.[1]Why We Sleep (2017) is his first work of popular science.[6]
Walker was born inLiverpool, England, and was raised in that city andChester.[7] Walker graduated with a degree in neuroscience fromUniversity of Nottingham in 1996. He received a Ph.D. inneurophysiology fromNewcastle University in 1999,[8] where his research was funded by theMedical Research Council (MRC) Neurochemical Pathology Unit.[9]
Walker has spent most of his career working in the United States.
In 2004 Walker became an assistant professor of psychiatry atHarvard Medical School. In one experiment he conducted in 2002, he trained people to type a complex series of keys on a computer keyboard as quickly as possible. One group started in the morning and the other started in the evening, with a 12-hour time interval for each group respectively. He and his colleagues found that those who were tested in the evening first and re-tested after getting a good night's sleep improved their performance significantly without a loss of accuracy compared to their counterparts.[10][11]
Walker left Harvard in 2007 and has taught as a professor of neuroscience and psychology at theUniversity of California, Berkeley. Walker is the founder and director of the Center for Human Sleep Science, which is located in UC Berkeley's department of psychology, in association with theHelen Wills Neuroscience Institute and theHenry H. Wheeler Jr. Brain Imaging Center. The organisation uses brain imaging methods (MRI, PET scanning), high-density sleepelectroencephalography recordings,genomics,proteomics, autonomic physiology, brain stimulation, andcognitive testing to investigate the role of sleep in human health and disease. It researchesAlzheimer's disease,Parkinson's disease,cancer,depression,anxiety,insomnia,cardiovascular disease, drug abuse,obesity, anddiabetes.[12]
In 2018 Walker collaborated with research scientists atProject Baseline in developing asleep diary.[13] Project Baseline is led byVerily (a life sciences research organisation ofAlphabet Inc.). In 2020 Walker stated on his website that he was "a Sleep Scientist at Google [helping] the scientific exploration of sleep in health and disease[14] but his LinkedIn states he stopped advising Google in February 2020.[15]
Walker's first book wasWhy We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams (2017).[16] He spent four years writing the book,[17] in which he asserts thatsleep deprivation is linked to numerous fatal diseases, includingdementia.[18] The book became aSunday Times bestseller in the UK,[19] and aNew York Times Bestseller in the US.[20] It has also been published in Spanish and in traditional Mandarin Chinese in 2019 by Commonwealth Publishing Group.
Why We Sleep was subject to criticism by Alexey Guzey, an independent researcher with a background in economics, in an essay entitled "Matthew Walker's 'Why We Sleep' Is Riddled with Scientific and Factual Errors".[21][22] Guzey, together withAndrew Gelman, a statistician atColumbia University, accused Walker of falsification of data in an article published inChance.[23] Guzey and Gelman argued that "it is unethical to reproduce a graph and remove the one bar in the original graph that contradicts your story".[23] Gelman suggested that the case entered into the territory of "research misconduct."[24][25]
Walker claimed on numerous occasions, including inWhy We Sleep, that theWorld Health Organization (WHO) had declared "a global sleep loss epidemic."[6] The WHO denied his claim, and Walker subsequently conceded that his assertion had been "misremembered," and was actually attributable to a claim from theCenters for Disease Control and Prevention in 2014.[26]
Walker failed to disclose that numerous meta-analyses involving over four million adults found the lowest mortality was associated with seven hours of sleep, and that the increased risk of death associated with sleeping more than seven hours was significantly greater than the risk of sleeping less than seven hours as defined by a J-shaped curve. PsychologistStuart J. Ritchie criticised Walker's approach in his book. "Walker could have written a far more cautious book that limited itself to just what the data shows, but perhaps such a book wouldn't have sold so many copies or been hailed as an intervention that 'should change science and medicine.'"[27]
In 2018 Walker was a guest onThe Joe Rogan Experience[28]
In 2019 Walker gave aTED talk entitled "Sleep is your superpower".[29][30][31] Markus Loecher, Professor for Mathematics and Statistics at Berlin School of Economics and Law criticised its claims and the veracity of its facts.[32]
Walker has a short-form podcast,The Matt Walker Podcast, focusing on sleep, the brain, and the body.[33][3]
An article written by Walker published inNeuron in August 2019 was retracted in July 2020, at the request of the author, after it was found to have considerable overlap with an article he had previously published inThe Lancet.[34]
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