Was Our Sleep Study Flawed?

Usually I reply to the comments of our readers in the comments section. Till now, these have mostly concerned private road construction, payday loans, wedding favors and other topics of concern only to beginning filmmakers who come here looking for advice from the pros.

Longtime subscriber DanielK has departed from such topics in his latest comment, so I am replying here, where even those readers with a non-technical interest in movies that put the audience to sleep can decide the truth for themselves.

Commented Daniel about the UNDOCTORED photo of (and by) first WebcamMurder.com fan Joshua Kight, et al, sleeping through WebcamMurder.com: “I wish he had posted video... it’s a little hard to tell if they’re all really asleep without a sign of Rapid Eye Movement. How do you know they’re not just resting their eyes? Or blinking at the flash? This is not empirical evidence; it’s merely anecdotal.”

Perhaps Mr. K (Daniel, not Joshua) is not as knowledgeable about the five stages of sleep as, oh, say, the editorial team of sleepdisorderguide.com, who clearly state, “Normal sleep has 2 distinct states: non-rapid eye movement (NREM) and rapid eye movement sleep (REM sleep).” During stages 3 and 4, which together are called deep sleep: “There is no eye movement or muscle activity.” Therefore, in “deep sleep,” there is no need for video corroboration, and an UNDOCTORED still photo is all that is needed to convince the experts.

I do apologize, however (more than George Michael but not as much as Mel Gibson), for not stressing that Mr. Kight took the photo during REM sleep, and by the time the shutter clicked was in a deep, non-eye moving sleep. Sorry for the confusion.