Last Updated on February 17, 2024 by pg@petergamma.org
In Greek mythology, Sisyphus or Sisyphos (/ˈsɪsɪfəs/; Ancient Greek: Σίσυφος Sísyphos) was the founder and king of Ephyra (now known as Corinth). He was a devious tyrant who killed visitors to show off his power. This violation of the sacred hospitality tradition greatly angered the gods. They punished him for trickery of others, including his cheating death twice. The gods forced him to roll an immense boulder up a hill only for it to roll back down every time it neared the top, repeating this action for eternity.
Through the classical influence on modern culture, tasks that are both laborious and futile are therefore described as Sisyphean (/sɪsɪˈfiːən/).[2]
taken from Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisyphus
Albert Camus was a French writer, philosopher and religious critic. In 1957 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature for his entire journalistic work. Camus is considered one of the most famous and important French authors of the 20th century
Since several years we reviewed physiological sensor devices in the low cost range.
Smartwatches
We started with smartwatches, and wanted to find out how accurate they are:
We ended up with the hypothesis that they do not deliver data which can be reproduced to do scientific studies at a high level. Or at least not for our application, and our application is practicing meditation.
And our goal is to build up a home lab which fit’s the needs of physiologists. Which scientist with a high-level education does want to look at his training data only in Garmin Connect, where he cannot to his own scientific study?
Single lead ECG devices from BITalino
Are there any really serious scientists who use this device in their home lab? Eventually Hugo Plácido da Silva. But for which scientist is it enough to have a single lead ECG device which measures it’s heart rate? But will the studies he does will only be accepted in low level journals where the requirements the peer-reviewers have set are low?
As far as we know to be taken really serious as a scientist, it requires at least a TA 220 from iWorx with 3 channel ECG to get data which are accurate enough.
ECG devices from the Muse 2 to g.tec medical multi-purpose
Cody Rall MD with Techforpsych showed different devices which are used also in scientific papers. But are not a lot of them partly funded by the developers of the devices, which basically make those to paid promotional papers?
With other reviews on WordPress or YouTube, we ask ourselves, if these where scientific studies whch have sent to scientific papers, where they where not accepted, and then the authors published those on YouTube and WordPress instead?
Has this in general something to do with the fact, that someone else has already tested all of the devices we reviewed on www.petergamma.org, and these where scientist? And then they came to the conclusion they are not suitable for scientific studies?
So they can only be used for private users. And now these devices are tested and reviewed again on YouTube and WordPress by Rob ter Horst and Peter Gamma.
And then for the second time, at least we as Swiss scientist who only want to do Swiss quality science, and do not want to pretend to be scientist, we come to the conclusion that these devices are mostly not suitable to do scientific studies with it.
We mainly reviewed devices which we found on YouTube and WordPress. But are these decices there, since they where previously declared by scientists not to be suitable for scientific studies?
One exeption of this rule is the device of Dr. Richard Davidson:
Richard Davidson made a study with Buddhist monks we mentioned previously:
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.0407401101
Richard Davidson once said, the data of this paper where reproduced in a second paper. But the first PNAS paper was published 20 years from now. It has let to the founding of the Meditation Research Institute Switzerland (MRIS). Unfortunately we do not know of a second research institute around the word with the name «Meditation Research Institute» which is currently active.
Is this because this is the wrong approach? Who funds Meditation Research Institutes somewhere around the world?
And our second question, is it the wrong approach either to search on YouTube and WordPress for devices which are suitable for scientific studies? Devices which are on YouTube and WordPress because they are NOT suitable for scientific studies? If they where, we would find reserachers who use these devices in scientific papers. And also in papers which do not have any conflict of interest. But we hardly find these devices in high quality papers.
And if scientists as Rob ter Horst and Peter Gamma test and review these devices all the same, is it not the work of a Sisyphus?
This is the hypothesis of Peter Gamma from www.petergamma.org. But who wants to prove or disprove this hypothesis? We suggest to read good papers instead, which we hardly found about the devices we reviewed on www.petergamma.org.