Daylight Saving Time Has No Scientific Basis and Causes Measurable Harm

Summary

Daylight saving time was never adopted for scientifically sound reasons - it originated from personal hobbies (bug collecting, golf) and wartime coal-saving assumptions that have since been disproven. The biannual clock shift causes measurable harm: a 6% spike in fatal car crashes, up to 24% increase in heart attacks, and significant workplace injury increases due to circadian rhythm disruption.

Key Insight

• The common claim that DST helps farmers is false - agricultural workers have historically opposed it because livestock operate on biological clocks, not wall clocks
• Benjamin Franklin’s 1784 “proposal” was satire (taxing shutters, rationing candle wax, firing cannons) - he never suggested changing clocks
• The actual originators had trivial motivations: George Hudson (1895, New Zealand) wanted more evening light for insect collecting; William Willett (1907, UK) wanted longer golf games
• Germany first implemented DST in WWI to save coal; other countries copied it as a wartime measure and it stuck
• Modern evidence shows DST does NOT save energy
• Concrete health impacts the day after spring-forward:
  • 6% increase in fatal car accidents
  • Up to 24% jump in heart attacks
  • Significant spike in workplace injuries
• These effects stem from disrupted circadian rhythms - essentially a mild, society-wide jet lag imposed twice yearly on a third of the world’s countries