Study: Waking Up Like Being Drunk

Ant writes "CNN reports that "sleep inertia" leaves some people so groggy, after they wake up, they might as well be drunk, researchers said on Tuesday. "For a short period, at least, the effects of sleep inertia may be as bad as or worse than being legally drunk," said researcher Kenneth Wright of the University of Colorado at Boulder."

Comments

Easy to scoff

[SimianOverlord]

If you had gone to a hospital bureaucrat and argued against shift patterns for junior doctors requiring them to nap during the night when no patients were around, and they asked you for evidence, what then do you do? Say that they would be sleepy? That it was common sense that they couldn't do their job safely?

I suspect you'd be dismissed because people don't make important decisions like that based on what Joe Schmoe reckons is 'obvious'. That's why things that, on the face of them seem obvious, must be checked out scientifically. There has to be evidence to base decisions on, as gut feelings and common sense are, in many cases, completely and flagrantly wrong.

You demand those new conditions for junior doctors, and you're suddenly paying them millions of pounds more countrywide. I wouldn't stake millions of pounds on someones common sense without something more to back it up.