Roberts/Self-Experimentation Source of Ideas: BBS Call for Commentators

Below is a link to the forthcoming BBS target article Self-Experimentation as a Source of New Ideas: Ten Examples About Sleep, Mood, Health, and Weight by Seth Roberts http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Roberts/Referees/ This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences. Commentators must be BBS Associates or suggested by a BBS Associate. To be considered as a commentator for this article, to suggest other appropriate commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS Associate, please reply by EMAIL within three (3) weeks to: calls(a)bbsonline.org The Calls are sent to 10,000 BBS Associates, so there is no expectation (indeed, it would be calamitous) that each recipient should comment on every occasion! 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(In the meantime, your name, address and email address will be entered into our database as an unaffiliated investigator.) ======================================================================= ** IMPORTANT ** ======================================================================= To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, it would be most helpful if you would send us an indication of the relevant expertise you would bring to bear on the paper, and what aspect of the paper you would anticipate commenting upon. (Please note that we only request expertise information in order to simplify the selection process.) Please DO NOT prepare a commentary until you receive a formal invitation, indicating that it was possible to include your name on the final list, which is constructed so as to balance areas of expertise and frequency of prior commentaries in BBS. To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for this article, an electronic draft is retrievable at the URL that follows the abstract and keywords below. ======================================================================= ======================================================================= Self-Experimentation as a Source of New Ideas: Ten Examples About Sleep, Mood, Health, and Weight Seth Roberts University of California, Berkeley ABSTRACT: We know little about how to generate plausible new scientific ideas. So it is noteworthy that 12 yr of self-experimentation led to the discovery of several surprising cause-effect relationships and helped produce a new theory. The cause-effect relationships are: (a) Seeing faces in the morning on television decreased mood in the evening (> 10 h later) and improved mood the next day (> 24 h later), yet had no detectable effect before that (0-10 h later). The effect was strongest if the faces were life-sized and at a conversational distance. Travel across time zones reduced the effect for a few weeks. (b) Standing 8 h/day reduced early awakening and made sleep more restorative, even though more standing was associated with less sleep. (c) Morning light (1 h/day) reduced early awakening and made sleep more restorative. (d) Breakfast increased early awakening. (e) Standing and morning light together eliminated colds (upper respiratory tract infections) for > 5 yr. (f) Drinking lots of water, eating low-glycemic-index foods, and eating sushi each caused a modest weight loss. (g) Drinking unflavored fructose water caused a large weight loss, accompanied by much less hunger than usual, that has been sustained > 1 yr. Unflavored sucrose water had similar effects. The sugar-water effect was discovered with the help of a new theory of weight control, which assumes that flavors associated with calories raise the body-fat set point-the stronger the association, the greater the increase. Between meals the set point declines. Long-term self-experimentation seems to be a good way to generate ideas. KEYWORDS: breakfast, circadian, colds, depression, discovery, innovation, insomnia, obesity, sitting, sugar http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Roberts/Referees/ ======================================================================= ======================================================================= *** SUPPLEMENTARY ANNOUNCEMENT *** (1) Call for Book Nominations for BBS Multiple Book Review In the past, Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) had only been able to do 1-2 BBS multiple book treatments per year, because of our limited annual page quota. 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