Editorial standards: how we grade sleep and dream research

Mindful Slumber sells a dream-yoga and sleep-meditation app. That commercial fact is the first thing a trustworthy health-adjacent publisher should say.

This page is the contract for every brief in the Science Center. If a claim on our site cannot survive these rules, it should not be on the site.

What we are — and are not

We are:

• A product company explaining the published science that touches our features
• A citation-first desk: every causal-sounding sentence should be traceable to a paper, a guideline, or an explicit tradition (labeled as tradition)
• Willing to say “the evidence is weak,” “this is not first-line care,” or “we do not know”

We are not:

• A medical publisher, hospital, or continuing-education provider
• A substitute for a board-certified sleep physician, psychologist, or psychiatrist
• A place that invents “Dr.” bylines to look authoritative

Google’s quality rater guidance for Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) topics rewards experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trust. Fake credentials destroy all four. Named, real reviewers are welcome; fictional ones are forbidden here.

Evidence grades

Each brief carries a grade. Grades describe the literature we cite, not our enthusiasm for a practice.

A High grade for CBT-I does not make mindfulness useless. A Limited grade for Yoga Nidra does not make the practice worthless. Grades answer one question: how strong is the published case for this specific claim?

What we cite

Preferred, in order:

1. Clinical practice guidelines and position papers (American College of Physicians, American Academy of Sleep Medicine, NIH/NCCIH consumer summaries)
2. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses of randomized trials
3. Individual randomized trials with pre-registered outcomes
4. High-density EEG / fMRI studies that operationalize a state (for example, signal-verified lucid REM)
5. Narrative reviews by domain experts, used for context, not as sole support for a treatment claim

We generally do not cite:

• Internal marketing surveys
• Uncontrolled app-store testimonials as evidence of efficacy
• Popular books when a primary paper exists
• Preprints as settled fact (we may mention them as emerging)

Every brief lists primary sources with DOI and/or PMID so a skeptical reader can leave our site.

How we handle Tibetan dream yoga

Dream yoga (milam) is a Vajrayana and Bön contemplative system. Laboratory lucid dreaming is a narrower construct: insight during REM, often verified with pre-arranged eye movements.

We keep those frames separate:

• Tradition language belongs to teachers, texts, and living lineages.
• Laboratory language belongs to operational definitions, EEG, and induction trials.

A finding that some people can answer math questions in REM (Konkoly et al., 2021) does not validate every soteriological claim in the Six Yogas of Naropa. Conversely, a null clinical trial does not erase a contemplative path’s meaning for practitioners.

Commercial interest

Mindful Slumber has a financial interest in people downloading and using our apps. That interest creates bias toward:

• Overstating meditation for insomnia
• Presenting lucid dreaming as treatment
• Ignoring first-line care (CBT-I, imagery rehearsal therapy, evaluation for apnea)

Our counter-bias rules:

• If a guideline names a first-line treatment we do not offer, we say so on the relevant brief.
• We do not claim the app treats insomnia disorder, PTSD, major depression, or sleep apnea.
• “How this informs the app” sections describe inspiration and constraints, not proof of product efficacy. We have not published a randomized trial of Mindful Slumber.

Medical and safety language

On every health-adjacent page:

• A visible not medical advice notice
• A when to see a clinician section where relevant
• Mentions of populations who should not self-experiment (trauma, psychosis-spectrum conditions, untreated sleep disorders)

Meditation and dream practices are not risk-free. The NCCIH notes that some people experience increased anxiety or other difficult effects. Intensive lucidity practice can fragment sleep. We treat those as design constraints, not fine print.

Review cycle

• date is first publication.
• lastmod is the last substantive edit.
• lastReviewed is the last time citations were checked against the papers.

Core briefs are reviewed at least once a year, or within 60 days of a major guideline change. Readers who find an error should write [email protected]. Corrections are recorded in lastmod.

Corrections policy

If we mis-state a sample size, confuse a secondary outcome with a primary one, or cite a paper for a claim it does not support, we fix the text and update the reviewed date. We do not silently rewrite history on purpose; if a brief’s conclusion changes, the update date will move.

Future independent review

The strongest E-E-A-T next step is named external review: a sleep psychologist or behavioral-sleep-medicine clinician who agrees, in their own name, that a brief fairly represents the papers. Until that relationship exists, we will not display a caduceus, a “medically reviewed” badge, or a stock photo of a lab coat.

Authority is built by being checkable.