PhotoperiodEffect.com

14. Almost all the experiments and studies you cite are a bit to one side of what it would take to directly prove your thesis. Where are the experiments that, say, put half the diabetics in the dark for twelve hours a day to see whether they do better than the other half of diabetics who stay up like the rest of us?

The hypothesis has to come first. I hope such clinical studies will now be done. In fact, an enormous body of medical research will now have to be done all over again now, controlling for the influence of the photoperiod that each subject is experiencing. Needless to say, I wish such experiments had been conducted, and I can think of a laundry list of critical studies that I'd love to see done right now, maybe starting with the one you mentioned. But this argument has to come first, to open the discussion.

It may even be, as has so often been the case in the past, that ordinary citizens using forms of darkness therapy themselves will have to experience benefits for many years before medicine seriously considers performing clinical trials on such an “alternative” therapy for chronic illness. This was the case for nearly everything we now know about nutrition, after all. “Health nuts” had to make special efforts to purchase whole grain bread for many decades before doctors and researchers were even willing to consider the possibility that extra fiber might help our health. When I was in high school, we were gathered into the auditorium and shown special films that specifically warned us against the “unscientific” idea that white bread wasn't exactly as good for us as brown bread, and similar claims that refined foods might not be a terrific thing. It was considered an important message that every schoolchild had to be given: or else science would soon be replaced by “health nut quackery.” “Science” just meant not ever considering doing actual experiments concerning such superstitious notions; which in the 1960s were far beyond the pale. Therefore, it was better by far, to spend much more money than such experiments would have cost to educate young people to avoid “natural” nutrition.