Blue light filter is actually bad for you, new study shows

[Curufinwe_wins]

2 hours ago, OlympicAssEater said:

Next month: Bluelight filter is good for your eyes

 

Seriously, I can't trust this type of research study anymore. 50% researchers say it is bad while 50% researchers says it is good. As matter of fact, I can't trust scientist anymore.

That is a really bad conclusion to take from this. No study is authoritative and the very statement "X is categorically good/bad for Y"... is almost certainly false. Truth is almost always more nuanced and complicated.

IE a crapload of people die from overdosing on H2O every year. Many others die from insufficient H2O. Many diseases are linked to potassium deficiency, and yet bulk potassium injections have often been used for death sentences in the US. 

 

If the bulk of studies show conflicting results WHILE additionally having similar quality methodologies (ideally same methods), then at least we can have reasonable certainty that the effect is small in either direction, within the scope of the studies.

 

That's why as a research scientist myself I was (and am) annoyed that @GoodBytes decided to go full "lets take this study way out of its actual conclusions so as to bring up sufficiently hyberbolic statements about it to serve my cynicism"

 

24 minutes ago, mr moose said:

As far as I am concerned,  if the scientific consensus doesn't change then it's because we have either discovered all there is to discover (not sure I am at ease with that),  or the truth is beyond our means right now.  Either way any change in consensus just means they have discovered more now than they knew before.    And when it comes to food,  going with the best evidence we have is better than random judging if something is good/bad for you based on lack of confidence in science.  

Also worth noting that scientists are people too, and there is a 'more true than I wish it was' saying by Max Planck that "a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." 

 

Basically humans suck at changing their minds once they believe something to be true, though that is also why trying to teach people not to think in terms of a the dogma of Falsification but rather in terms of a Bayesian evidence system for promoting new models is quite helpful. It implicitly reduces the tendencies of people to think in absolutist terms and thus makes it easier (while also giving a formal path) to accommodate new evidence if and when it arrives.

 

 

Final Side Note: It is mathematically provable that Bayes' Theory devolves into the dogma of falsification when and if the likelihood of negative results predicted from a model approaches 0. Just don't 'be born' with stupid priors.

[LAwLz]

14 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

I have found that blue light filters fixed the huge eye strain issues I was having and it was a huge difference and I would find it hard to believe that a placebo could make the pain in my eye go away. 

Placebo can absolutely cause pain to go away.

Hell, pain is probably one of the most common and well studied nocebo effects. Tell a patience that a pill will cause pain, and they will most likely report that they did. Tell a patience that a pill will relieve pain, and they probably will report that it did.

[vanished]

37 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Placebo can absolutely cause pain to go away.

Hell, pain is probably one of the most common and well studied nocebo effects. Tell a patience that a pill will cause pain, and they will most likely report that they did. Tell a patience that a pill will relieve pain, and they probably will report that it did.

I liked the test they did on Mind Field.  They hooked volunteers up to a harmless machine that did nothing but shine a light on them but warned them it would be painful and before long, some were having such a hard time withstanding it they had to stop early.

[Kilrah]

It's OK, it gives Apple an opportunity for another "brand new innovative feature" on their next round of products, a red light filter! 

[Biggus Dickus]

Yeah, blue light filters are a meme. I used them on all my devices for 9 months. I haven’t noticed any difference. In fact, I had a harder time looking at the screen while they were active. Then I played around with the settings and I noticed that dimming the screen according to the room lighting is the only thing that helps, and it’s much better if you don’t use color filters. Phones and some laptops can already do this automatically.

 

I tried a monochromatic mode. It’s actually a lot more straining to look at something without colors because my brain needs to work more to figure out what’s what. Similar can be said by filtering any color. It’s not natural for us to blind ourselves on purpose.

 

If you have trouble falling asleep "because of computer screens" then your brain is overstimulated and you’re too addicted to staring at your entertainment devices. Color filtering won’t help. Stop being an addict, take a walk or ride a bike, do some sport, meet your friends, go fishing and daydream, have sex, just do something that doesn’t involve grabbing your phone or PC every 10 seconds and everything will be fine.

[Cherno77]

After using filter till midnight, when I turn it off I can instantly feel the strain on my eyes, call it placebo if you will. 

Also, maybe not all of them are the same. Some on Android place a crappy overlay on screen which makes everything worse. The effect I talked about was using F.lux with low intensity. 

[Brooksie359]

12 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Placebo can absolutely cause pain to go away.

Hell, pain is probably one of the most common and well studied nocebo effects. Tell a patience that a pill will cause pain, and they will most likely report that they did. Tell a patience that a pill will relieve pain, and they probably will report that it did.

It doubt it would work on the type of pain that I was experiencing to the extent that the pain went away. I have dealt with placebo causing pain but have yet to experience the opposite. 

[DeepSOIC]

Link to actual scientific article:

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2019.11.031

(it's open access)

And what a shame, none of these news posted the link to the article.

[Coolaid]

Wouldn’t it also be possible to train your own brain to make blue filters a pavlovian response to get tired? 
 

Or would our instinctual response trump that?

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, Coolaid said:

Wouldn’t it also be possible to train your own brain to make blue filters a pavlovian response to get tired? 
 

Or would our instinctual response trump that?

Nothing trumps slavering puppers.  They’re soo cute!

[Curufinwe_wins]

1 hour ago, Coolaid said:

Wouldn’t it also be possible to train your own brain to make blue filters a pavlovian response to get tired? 
 

Or would our instinctual response trump that?

Yes.

[Bombastinator]

4 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

Yes.

[mr moose]

5 hours ago, Coolaid said:

Wouldn’t it also be possible to train your own brain to make blue filters a pavlovian response to get tired? 
 

Or would our instinctual response trump that?

If people can have a physical reaction to food because they were told it was not organic, then you can condition people to believe anything and have genuine reactions to it.

 

 

[Beskamir]

On 12/17/2019 at 8:06 PM, GoodBytes said:

The research, which was carried out on mice, used specially designed lighting that allowed the team to adjust colour without changing brightness.

Allow me to introduce you to this chart:

As you can see mouse vision is rather different from human vision even just with regards to which wavelengths get detected nevermind the fact that they only have 2 cones while we've got 3. Plus our rods don't activate to red light so you can use a red flashlight without ruining your night vision. The same would not be true for a mouse. This is also why labs sometimes use red lights to allow researchers to see without waking up animals.

 

This kind of experiment really should have been ran in humans. Besides as far as I can tell (at least at a glance) this doesn't seem like something that'd require permanent damage to or euthanization of the test subjects so there's really no reason why they couldn't have adapted it to human participants.

 

In short, this research looks like a clear lack of understanding that animals don't view the world in the same way we do and what we find about their responses to various wavelengths may not be true for us.

[Bombastinator]

2 minutes ago, Beskamir said:

Allow me to introduce you to this chart:

As you can see mouse vision is rather different from human vision even just with regards to which wavelengths get detected nevermind the fact that they only have 2 cones while we've got 3. Plus our rods don't activate to red light so you can use a red flashlight without ruining your night vision. The same would not be true for a mouse. This is also why labs sometimes use red lights to allow researchers to see without waking up animals.

 

This kind of experiment really should have been ran in humans. Besides as far as I can tell (at least at a glance) this doesn't seem like something that'd require permanent damage to or euthanization of the test subjects so there's really no reason why they couldn't have adapted it to human participants.

 

In short, this research looks like a clear lack of understanding that animals don't view the world in the same way we do and what we find about their responses to various wavelengths may not be true for us.

There are problems with human testing.  There are pesky rules about keeping them in cages and stuff.  Goes back to the Nuremberg trials.  They try it in mice, they try it on something still not human (used to be monkeys but not so much anymore) then they try it on people.

[Beskamir]

Just now, Bombastinator said:

There are problems with human testing.  There are pesky rules about keeping them in cages and stuff.  Goes back to the Nuremberg trials.  They try it in mice, they try it on something still not human (used to be monkeys but not so much anymore) then they try it on people.

This experiment didn't necessitate keeping people in cages. If you can ethically study the effects of sleep deprivation on performance, you should be able to ethically study whether blue light filters matter.

[Bombastinator]

Just now, Beskamir said:

This experiment didn't necessitate keeping people in cages. If you can ethically study the effects of sleep deprivation on performance, you should be able to ethically study whether blue light filters matter.

If you can do it you can do it.  I have nothing against the concept of the study.  I just am not sure that the conclusions drawn are valid to the degree they are being interpreted.  It’s possible a mouse study had to be done as a step to the next study.

[Kisai]

On 12/18/2019 at 7:20 PM, Caroline said:

Hey I can hear that too on my tube and another sound that LCD TVs make, it's like a constant "shhh" and it's even there when the TV is off (plugged and standby)

I've always been able to hear the flyback transformer in CRT's, which is why that big ol late model toshiba CRT I have stays unplugged when I'm not trying to play games on it.

 

Funny enough I started getting LESS migraine headaches when CRTs were phased out. However you know what makes high pitch whines? Computer fans and hard drive motors. Coil whine is also readily audible, but generally has more of a random-noise kind of sound where as the motor whines have a constant pitch to them which is like having tinnitus at that frequency. When the computer is turned off suddenly everything sounds super-quiet.

[mr moose]

12 minutes ago, Beskamir said:

 

 

 

In short, this research looks like a clear lack of understanding that animals don't view the world in the same way we do and what we find about their responses to various wavelengths may not be true for us.

 

You are assuming the researchers don't understand the limitations of their testing and haven't made all the appropriate notations and qualifiers available.  

 

Remember this is a media release we are reading not a scientific study that would require you to have an equivalent education in to properly understand anyway.

[Bombastinator]

1 minute ago, mr moose said:

 

You are assuming the researchers don't understand the limitations of their testing and haven't made all the appropriate notations and qualifiers available.  

 

Remember this is a media release we are reading not a scientific study that would require you to have an equivalent education in to properly understand anyway.

I’m not sure the education requirement is there.  It can definitely help.  I totally agree about the source though.

[Beskamir]

12 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

If you can do it you can do it.  I have nothing against the concept of the study.  I just am not sure that the conclusions drawn are valid to the degree they are being interpreted.  It’s possible a mouse study had to be done as a step to the next study.

My opinion is that doing a mouse study was a waste of time and resources since the results from this study are basically useless for given that mice have considerably different eyesight.

 

  

6 minutes ago, mr moose said:

 

You are assuming the researchers don't understand the limitations of their testing and haven't made all the appropriate notations and qualifiers available.  

 

Remember this is a media release we are reading not a scientific study that would require you to have an equivalent education in to properly understand anyway.

I've heard stories of researchers placing red signs on the walls and expecting rats that can't see red to see the sign... These kinds of oversights happen and I think this study is one such example. And yea, it'd be nice if there was a link to the actual paper in the media article but there wasn't and I'm too lazy to hunt it down.

[Bombastinator]

2 minutes ago, Beskamir said:

My opinion is that doing a mouse study was a waste of time and resources since the results from this study are basically useless for given that mice have considerably different eyesight.

 

  

I've heard stories of researchers placing red signs on the walls and expecting rats that can't see red to see the sign... These kinds of oversights happen and I think this study is one such example.

I don’t know enough about the workings of public science to have an opinion on that one.  Most studies turn out to have problems.  To badly quote Edison “now we know 1001 ways it doesn’t work”.  There is this thing called the screw of knowledge.  It needs to be turned and turned to get anywhere.  I agree that this experiment did not provide the evidence the article claims it provides though I suspect the conclusions made may be less inaccurate than some assume.  The test is not a good basis for those conclusions though.

[Beskamir]

1 minute ago, Bombastinator said:

I don’t know enough about the workings of public science to have an opinion on that one.  Most studies turn out to have problems.  To badly quote Edison “now we know 1001 ways it doesn’t work”.  There is this thing called the screw of knowledge.  It needs to be turned and turned to get anywhere.  I agree that this experiment did not provide the evidence the article claims it provides though I suspect the conclusions made may be less inaccurate than some assume.  The test is not a good basis for those conclusions though.

For sure, I agree. It's possible blue light filters are just snake oil but this study didn't definitely disprove the usefulness of blue light filters since they studied the effect in the wrong animals.

[vanished]

38 minutes ago, mr moose said:

You are assuming the researchers don't understand the limitations of their testing and haven't made all the appropriate notations and qualifiers available.  

 

Remember this is a media release we are reading not a scientific study that would require you to have an equivalent education in to properly understand anyway.

I really want to know what those adjustments were, because yeah, it's impossible for me to think the researchers didn't account for obvious things like mice eyes being different, or the fact they're nocturnal and we are not, but I can't think of how you would deal with such a thing off hand.

[mr moose]

2 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

I’m not sure the education requirement is there.  It can definitely help.  I totally agree about the source though.

I am,  The sciences are not just basic principals applied in a yes/no manor, there are literally hundreds of conditions that effect every facet of research.  trying to qualify every aspect of a study and maintain some sort of relevance or outcome is not easy, and the less educated people have less information to properly appraise the value and data presented.  This is the chief reason the peer review process is carried out by equally qualified and experienced scientists and not anyone else.  It is also why you will hear a great number of scientist refuse to say anything beyond the most rudimentary on studies they are not educated in.  

 

 

2 hours ago, Beskamir said:

 

 

  

I've heard stories of researchers placing red signs on the walls and expecting rats that can't see red to see the sign... These kinds of oversights happen and I think this study is one such example. And yea, it'd be nice if there was a link to the actual paper in the media article but there wasn't and I'm too lazy to hunt it down.

We've all heard stories, that is the problem,  the only thing most people hear are stories.    How many times in threads like this does it get raised that most studies are wrong?  Lots, people throw it around like they know what they are talking about.  But it's not true in the way people think it is true.   Just like in this thread, we have people trying to dismiss the study because they think they know something the researchers don't, which is a pretty big assumption to make.

 

https://thelogicofscience.com/2016/05/10/most-scientific-studies-are-wrong-but-that-doesnt-mean-what-you-think-it-means/?fbclid=IwAR0boB-aY64xqFFsRhunVxX07osbd1L0TwPymmImyUPVAStLuHchHkdhXRQ

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

I really want to know what those adjustments were, because yeah, it's impossible for me to think the researchers didn't account for obvious things like mice eyes being different, or the fact they're nocturnal and we are not, but I can't think of how you would deal with such a thing off hand.

 

You can't deal with it casually.  In order to understand how research is carried out you need the relevant education and experience on the subject.  I know this annoys a lot of people because it suddenly brick walls their opinions as less valuable than a decent scientific study, as is reality.  But that's most sciences in a nutshell.  People don't know how to rebuild an engine without learning how to, we can't fly a plane without learning.  Music is the same, very few people can pick up an instrument and play like Mozart without training and years of practice.  Another analogy is CPU design, who on these forums could walk into Intel and problem solve a design issue with a new CPU?  none of us could and science is not really that different.  There is a lot in each study that needs to be addressed by people who understand that science, they are the ones who will pick the flaws, a really good article will preemptively address such concerns with citations to articles that other studies that contradict it and qualify why.

 

See point number three in this post:

 

https://thelogicofscience.com/2015/08/03/10-steps-for-evaluating-scientific-papers/

 

And point seven highlights the need for proper education in order to be able to properly analyze the relevance and accuracy of the data:

 

Quote

So, you need to make sure that the study had a large enough sample size, used the proper controls, randomized correctly, used the appropriate statistical analyses, etc. This is again going to require you to learn experimental design and statics. If you don’t understand those topics then you simply aren’t qualified to critically examine scientific papers.

 

This means each paper published requires several hours of cross examination by suitably qualified people in order to refute it or accept it as reasonable.