The team tested the idea by studying 16 male volunteers who were required to stay awake for more than 28 hours at a time. They were given pills of caffeine or placebos. The results showed that volunteers taking the caffeine pills did better on tests of mental ability and fell asleep less often when they were supposed to be awake, despite feeling sleepier than those on placebos.I do believe these tests are re-enacted at the end of each semester at colleges across the nation. Except maybe the placebo part...
...unless someone accidentally gets unleaded instead of regular.
Your title “Doing it Wrong” is amazingly right. Reporting results as confirming anything from a sample size of 16 people is wrong.
What kinds of questions does this study leave out? Well, obviously a diverse sampling which makes any results ridiculously unreliable. Beyond that, what about a person’s cumlative exposure to caffeine? For example, I swore off caffeine. The longer I go without it, the bigger the impact when I do finally have a little. What about the caffeine delivery system? Does it make a difference if it comes from coffee or soda or pills? Were the young men taking any other drugs at the time (like alcohal, or nicotine)? Did they eat the same things, or did some guys have a diet high in protein and the other guys a diet high in carbs? The list goes on and on and on.
Great points, Lucy.
I’m in the same camp as you...it is only effective for me when I haven’t used it recently.
(And after 2 twelve hour drives last week, it is not effective for me at all this week. My work will suffer accordingly.)
http://king-of-fools.com/blog/trackback/737/vFSIUB2W/