--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "hugheshugo" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "sparaig" <LEnglish5@> wrote: > > > > > > http://www.brainresearchinstitute.org/research/ConcCog2004.pdf > > Interesting paper but it didn't take me long to spot the error that > seems to dog all research into TM, that of poor controls. > > The problem here is the choice of groups, you have a non-TM group, > short term TM(7 years) and long term TM(24 years). > > I would expect that as I've been meditating 15 years (TM for 5 and > TMSP for 10) I would fall into the last category, yet on a check of > the responses to questions I found myself falling towards the non-TM > group, why would this be? > > Two possible answers; TM doesn't work as claimed and the experiment > has been disproved OR the TM groups are simply recounting an > explanation of experiences learned during their time as members of a > very religious community steeped in Indian beliefs. Guess what > explanation I would go for, and I doubt I would be alone. > > That is what is meant by poor controls, what you need is a TMer like > me who never gave much of a toss about the supporting philosophy. > That said, I'm definitley "different" after meditating so long but > without a before and after test the statement is essentially > meaningless. >
You missed a couple of points. One: the groups were divided according to self-reports in the original experiment and in the followup (as below) and two, the previous study had checked for possible physiological differences between these groups. THIS study was a followup to see if there were differences on psychological tests and interviews in the three groups. The groups naturally fell into 3 self-selected groups. You would be part of group two, by the self-reporting criterion of the first study. The characterization of the groups as being long-term and shotrt-term TM is actually irrelevant to the study itself and at least partly reflects Travis's expectations. "The 51 subjects in this research comprised three groups based on degree of self-reported experiences of pure, self-referral consciousness during activity. The Non-TM group (N 17, age 39.7 +/-11.5 years) did not practice a meditation technique and rarely if ever reported the experience of pure self-referral consciousness. The Short-Term TM group (N 17; age 42.5 +/-11.5 years) had practiced TM for about eight years (7.8 +/-3.0 years), and reported pure self-referral consciousness experiences during TM but only occasionally during daily life. The Long-term TM group (N 17; age 46.5 +/-7.0 years) had practiced TM for about 25 years (24.5 +/-1.2 years) and reported the continuous experience of pure self-referral consciousness throughout daily life. (The age diï¬erences between groups were not statistically signiï¬cant, F 2; 481:90, p :160) Each group comprised eight females and nine males. "
