The last thing Seth Roberts does each night is turn on his bedside timer, and the first thing he does each morning is switch it off. He has tracked his own sleep for more than 30 years and all those data are stored and crunchable along with the many factors he suspects influence his slumber.
As his day job Roberts, an associate professor of psychology, studies animal behavior at the University of California at Berkeley. His self-study is "a hobby," he says. But he clearly thinks it's a hobby with a lot to offer the world of science. He outlined his methodologies and some of his results in a 2004 paper in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, and is currently writing a book for Penguin, The Science of One, about self-experimentation. His 2006 book The Shangri-La Diet, was also based on self-experimentation.
Roberts began experimenting on himself in order to address ...
