Talk:Matthew Walker (scientist)

User Remdreamer likely an associate of Walker or Walker himself

I'm the author of the critique of Walker's book mentioned on this page. I do not participate in the editing of this page or of the book's page. However, it seems that the user Remdreamer is either Walker himself or is closely associated with Walker and has been editing this page (and the book's page) extensively.

1. Remdreamer made their first edit on 2018-07-01. All edits made by them since their registration (15 as of 2020-05-05) either modify the page about Walker or the page about the book by adding some sort of information about him, linking to his website or by portraying him in a more positive light (can check by looking at edits by the user).

2. On 2018-10-10, Remdreamer uploaded a picture of Walker to Wikimedia and a few minutes later unsuccessfully tried to make that picture as Wikipedia's picture of Walker. Remdreamer indicated that they took picture (Source Own work). The picture was uploaded in 3,785 x 3,146 resolution. This is appears to be the only instance of that image on the internet in such a high resolution and with extensive metadata from the camera. Given that this is a personal photo, rather than one taken at a public event, this seems to be a pretty strong evidence that Remdreamer is closely associated to Walker or is Walker himself. Notably, this image but in lower resolution is used on Matthew Walker's official site and a cut-off version of this image is used in Walker's twitter (neither of those could be the source of the original image).

3. While fixing a number of errors about Walker and adding a lot of information about him, it is notable that the user did not correct an erroneous statement that Walker received his PhD from Medical Research Council, London. This error was corrected by a different user on 2019-03-07. Notably, Walker continues to falsely state that he received his PhD from MRC, London on his personal site and elsewhere.

4. In the first edit made by Remdreamer, they added a variety of information about Walker (e.g. that he was a Kavli Fellow) but, most notably, this edit contained a change in the estimated age of Walker. Prior to Remdreamer's edit, Walker's age was estimated to have been 44 years old at 2017-09-24, as this was his age according to the linked Guardian article ("Walker, who is 44 and was born in Liverpool" published on 2017-09-24). In their edit, Remdreamer changed the age estimated on 2017-09-24 from 44 years old to 42 years old, contradicting the linked article. Remdreamer did not add any sources that would explain why The Guardian's number was incorrect. However, Remdreamer's change is supported by Walker's Facebook page, which states that he was born on January 13, 1974 (have to be logged in to Facebook to see). This edit was reversed a week later. I find this change notable because I would not expect a random person to know Walker's age well enough to be able to spot such a mistake (that is further supported by an authoritative source), yet not be able to back it up by citing a different source (even though virtually all of Remdreamer's changes to the page are well-sourced).

5. As user wasoxygen pointed out on hubski.com in November 2019, "In June 2018, Walker's Wikipedia entry described his work for Verily Life Sciences, an Alphabet subsidiary. In July 2018, a user named Remdreamer changed the name to "Google Life Sciences (Verily)", and changed the heading from "Verily" to "Google". Since 2015 the Verily article used the description "Verily (formerly 'Google Life Sciences')." The word "Google" does not appear on the Verily home page — nor, for that matter, can I find Walker mentioned on the team page or in the blog. Remdreamer has edited no other articles."

Notably, both Walker's site and his Twitter say that he is a "Sleep Scientist at Google"

6. According to [rules], "Writing an autobiography on Wikipedia is an example of conflict of interest editing and is strongly discouraged. Editing a biography about yourself is acceptable only if you are removing unambiguous vandalism or clear-cut and serious violations of our biography of living persons policy."

AlexeyGuzey (talk) 11:13, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Update: on 2020-05-15 Remdreamer made another edit that portrays Walker in a more positive light, changing the phrase "many flaws" to "some flaws" (regarding the number of flaws in Walker's Why We Sleep): https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Matthew_Walker_%28scientist%29&type=revision&diff=956750397&oldid=953553037 AlexeyGuzey (talk) 18:40, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

@AlexeyGuzey: I have added a COI tag to the article. I'm currently taking a break from editing Wikipedia but I encourage other experienced editors to monitor this article closely. Pablo Stafforini (talk) 21:14, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out this quite plausible evidence. I have left a standard warning on the user's talk page, which will hopefully encourage him to stop violating Wikipedia's COI guidelines (in the case your conjecture is true).

Regarding 5. (Google/Verily), I took at look and while there is indeed no mention of Walker on Verily's website (according to Google site search), there is a mention on the website of Verily's Project Baseline, consisting of one sentence in this blog post: "In partnership with sleep expert and New York Times best-selling author Matthew Walker, Project Baseline researchers developed a sleep diary" during 2018. While this confirms that he worked with Verily at one point, it actually appears to describe him as an external collaborator, contradicting our article's wording "working as a sleep scientist at" Verily/Google (already in 2018). Walker's website says "Currently, Dr. Walker is a Sleep Scientist at Google. Here, Dr. Walker helps the scientific exploration of sleep in health and disease." Instead linking to further information about this scientific work, the page embeds two videos about Verily and Project Baseline, which however do not mention Walker or his work (apart from a two-second scene depicting sleep with the voiceover "track daily habits"). Walker is quoted on Project Baseline's Sleep research project" page, but again apparently as an external expert (introduced as author of "Why We Sleep"), whereas the project itself is billed as a collaboration of Stanford Medicine, Duke University School of Medicine, American Heart Association and Google. Neither Walker nor UC Berkeley are mentioned on https://www.projectbaseline.com/our-team/ either.

I have amended the article.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 07:49, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Criticism section

There are about 350 words dedicated to criticism of "Why We Sleep." This is off balance with the rest of the article. Some of this content would be more relevant on the Why We Sleep article. Also the reviews/comments from Greg Potter and Stuart J. Ritchie are summarized on Matthew Walker (scientist) and not on Why We Sleep. Why? Schierbecker (talk) 05:28, 12 April 2023 (UTC)