Easy Riser

Suppose you are a Martian. You write course work on discrimination in human society. You have identified several groups of people physically or psychologically different from the majority, and trying to figure out how much they feel infringed on rights.

There is a very simple way: to look on the Internet by popular science news about this group. The wider the news spread, the more it was translated, quoted, retold and distorted - the stronger the interest of the whole society, including the group representatives, in the information about its differences from the majority (and the greater the likelihood of discrimination).

For example, news about the nature of homosexuality enjoys unchanged success, and news about increased painful sensitivity of redheads or the opening of the “Left Gene” remain almost unnoticed.

Of course, the Martian should take into account that in addition to the distance between society and the group, two more factors affect the spread of news: political correctness (decent people will not even forgive Watson, not like the news site) and the large number of the group.

So, in order to write successful popular science news, you need to devote it to a group of people, to talk about which is not forbidden, a group of numerous and at the same time infringed in rights. And the best of all these parameters correspond, of course, owls.

There are so many of us, and we suffer so. We throw the university immediately after the undergraduate, because we can’t stand it for two more years. We refuse any work without free schedule. We neglect medical examinations because they occur early in the morning. If we are forced to live among people, then we eat exclusively energy drinks and constantly smoke. We want to eat tightly only by midnight, when even McDonald's is closed. We get up at seven in the morning only four times a year to donate blood, and we feel that we are really committing a civil feat. And, of course, when any news appears that we exist (and not just poorly brought up), we raise it to the banner and try to learn the whole world about it.

The movement “Science against the larks” began in 1962, when the French speleologist Michel Sifr rose from the cave. He told reporters that 58 days passed on the surface, while he thought he was in a cave for about a month. The news immediately spread “without the sun and hours of a day of a person lengthen, and that is why an owl cannot go to bed on time.” The funny thing is that in this experiment nothing really happened: for these 58 days, the SEFR went to bed and woke up 57 times, every 24.5 hours, it just seemed to him that he was sleeping about two times a day, and therefore he was mistaken with the number of days. However, in further cave experiments, for example, Josie Lores and Antoine Hall, for a day (as a period of sleep and wakefulness) really lengthened, and at the Sifra himself they became longer when he repeated his experiment in ten years.

Since then there have been many studies of circadian rhythms. We studied every detail: daily changes in body temperature, hormone levels, heart rate and nerve impulses. According to some signs of variability, there was almost no variability, and then in popular science news they wrote: “There are no owls and larks”, on other signs there was variability, and then they wrote in the news: “Owls and larks are genetically different from each other.” Later, the molecular genetic studies themselves were also connected, and now any gene, directly or indirectly related to the regulation of daily rhythms (BMAL, HPER2, Rev-RB, and so on), enters the news under the heading of the genetic difference between the owls and the larks proved. "

But most of all, of course, to the oppressors and oppressed articles are interesting about the advantages of their or enemy lifestyle. It is they who are distorted especially enthusiastic. “Early Risers Crash Faster,” says the Philippe Peigneux neurophysiologist to American journalists and explains that ten hours after the awakening, the owls better cope with the tests for attention, and also says that owls are easier to adapt to work on the night shift (and the larks are complemented by the journalist, such work is more likely will perform a risk factor in the development of cardiovascular diseases). In some Russian news, this is transmitted as follows: 1) the owls are smarter; 2) Owls are less susceptible to cardiovascular diseases. And they convey the name of the researcher as follows: Reigns. Apparently, so that the enemies do not guess.

Undressure, yes, but I secretly sympathize with the translator. It is clear that he was taught a foreign language in the morning classes, and deserves that in such conditions he learned to translite at least some letters.