Classics of scientific literature in audiobooks cure insomnia

An unforeseen consequence

With the aim of increased public exposure to scientific articles, the Canadian Health Institutes of Research (CIHR) started the production of a whole new style of audiobook, narrating the best papers of the last decade: The Audioscientific Article.  

Despite high quality narration by Sir David Attenborough, the CIHR project encountered an important problem.  Indeed, nobody seemed able to produce an objective evaluation of the product since every single one of the beta testers fell asleep after 8 minutes (on average) into the audioarticle.  They just can't get past the title and the list of authors with their affiliations. 

"I usually suffer from insomnia, but I found that the audioarticle "MicroRNA let-7a represses chemoresistance and tumourigenicity in head and neck cancer via stem-like properties ablation", by Cheng Chia Yu, Yi Wei Chen, Guang Yuh Chiou, Lo Lin Tsai, Pin I. Huang, Charn Yung Chang, Ling Ming Tseng, Shih Hwa Chiou, Sang Hue Yen, Ming Yung Chou, Pen Yuan Chu and Wen Liang Lo is extremely efficient at making me fall asleep", one of the evaluators told us.

Negative impact on world markets

Releasing those audioarticles significantly increased the consumption of coffee from the listeners, who are trying to fight the induced dizziness and torpor.  It was reported that some listeners were drinking up to 1.5 liters of coffee per hour, for several continuous hours, trying to at least reach the abstract section.  This perhaps provides an explanation for the recent rise in coffee grains prices.  

A treatment against chronic insomnia

Seizing the opportunity, the CIHR will support a clinical trial aiming to cure all patients suffering from the disease.  The objectives of this study will be to test a) its specificity - e.g. whether articles about integrative genomics are better than pharmacoeconomics, for example -, b) its efficacy -  especially on school-aged children who seem unable to fall asleep before 21:00 on weeknights -, and finally c) its safety - if falling asleep without knowing the end of the article causes incapacitating frustration to the listener.   

To learn about the results of this research, the CIHR invites the population to download the audioarticle on the study, scheduled for release in the coming weeks.