If you've popped up here by accident, the starting place is What about sleep?— sleep in history and culture
notes by Sandra Dodd unless otherwise indicated

Criticism of Ekirch's Research

Sleep We Have Lost: Pre-industrial Slumber in the British Isles
A. Roger Ekirch, The American Historical Review, April 2001

That article was linked on the history of sleep page for a while, but the site (historycooperative.org) quietly replaced it with a different article on sleep. I'm guessing it was for publishing it openly. Otherwise, it's only online at professional and academic sites. Because it's from 2001, many other papers reference it.

If you're a person with access to scholarly or professional online libraries, you can find it easily with partial title and author.

While looking, I found someone had described it very negatively. This guy is "an independent freelance sleep expert." He has things to sell.

This critic is strident, and defensive. I started to say he was a dick, but I don't know him. I just read his description of his OWN sleep (it's on a tab at that site), and of his OWN credentials, including this (and that's his lack of a period/full stop):

In 2004 I received my PhD from the University of Surrey on the basis of my published works. Therefore I am not a medic, I am a proper Doctor. I don’t claim to be a medic, don’t want to be a medic, never wanted to be a medic and have never called myself a medic. Anyone who thus confuses me with being a medic, is frankly an idiot

So... he wrote first, was given a PhD without studying with mentors/professors, considers himself "a proper doctor," but medical doctors are just "medics," and anyone who is confused is "frankly an idiot."

I don't like him.

He complains that historians shouldn't be writing about sleep. WHY NOT!?

This guy seems not to consider history at all. His description of his own sleep environment talks about a particular brand of mattress (a company he's done work for), and other VERY recent conditions—nothing to do with history, or human instinct. I doubt he's thought much of what historians might know of a mid-night wakefulness involving relieving oneself–and the days before heated bathrooms just a few steps from the bed...

Here's where he criticizes Ekrich's research:

Sleep we never had - Prof. A Roger Ekirch and the myth of ‘segmented sleep

At the bottom of the page called "My sleep" there, he describes the research projects he worked with/for when he was younger. I felt a bit better about his knowledge after that, but still, it's to his personal financial advantage for people to think he can cure their problem.

There's a mention of working with a study involving psychopharamacology. Partly he worked at a sleep lab, and they were studying the effects of daytime sedatives on sleep.

I feel a little better about this guy, but not at ALL better about his criticism of A. Roger Ekirch's work.

Sleep in unschooling families

Sleeping—various articles about historical sleep being other than eight scheduled hours