Reply to Lawson (sparaig) via Judy's (authfriend) post.
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <jstein@...> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj <vajradhatu@> wrote: > > > > On Aug 1, 2011, at 8:49 PM, sparaig wrote: > > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj <vajradhatu@> wrote: > > > > > > > > On Aug 1, 2011, at 4:10 PM, sparaig wrote: > > > > > > > > > Of course, the only research on TM they cite in that > > > > > book is from 25 years ago, so one assumes that they > > > > > are also quoting the descriptions of pure > > > > > consciousness in the research done 25 years ago. > > > > > > > > Not true Lawson, they used research up to 2004! And they > > > > used what little was needed and of decent quality. It > > > > doesn't take volumes to show what the relaxation response > > > > occurring in TM looks like. I think your problem is you > > > > let yourself be wowed that something special is happening. > > > > Real neuroscientists aren't as easily fooled. > > > > > > > > They can do all the research they want and fudge all the > > > > data they want: we already know what is. > > > > > > http://www.mbcttrainingen.nl/Resources/Meditation%20and% > > > 20Neuroscience.pdf > > > > > > They cite a theoretical paper by Travis and Wallace from > > > 2004, and a book on the EEG of meditation published in 1987. > > > Everything else is older than that. > > > > > > My point still stands: the studies cited are from 25 > > > years ago. > > > > That's because TM has been around that long. Good science > > doesn't need to be repeated if it was done right the first > > time. So they leave the first good science as that is > > sufficient. If it's BS, they're better off leaving it. I > > guess you could say 'it's ship has sailed'. We know what > > it is and there's not much more to be said at this late date. > > This is meaningless babble designed to obscure the fact > that Vaj is attempting to mislead. > > Lawson is correct about the dates of the TM studies > discussed by the researchers Vaj cites. They cited only > the early TM research on the EEG signature of pure > consciousness and ignored everything done after that. > The single later study they cited is in a different > category entirely, and their citation of it does not > disprove what Lawson said. > > The abstract of that study is here if anyone is > interested: > > http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810004000212 > > The point is that TM researchers have continually > refined their methodology over the years. The researchers > Vaj touts dismissed the early studies as not definitive, > but there's no indication in their paper that they looked > at the later, post-1985 studies to see whether those studies > had more definitive findings as a result of the improved > methodology. > > Vaj has claimed in other posts, and implies above, that > his researchers didn't mention or cite the later studies > because they found those studies no more definitive than > the earlier ones, but of course one can't make that > assumption. It's entirely possible that his researchers > *did* look at the later studies and didn't discuss them > because they *were* more definitive and couldn't be > dismissed so easily. > > The "tell" in the study Vaj touts that his researchers > at the very least did not understand what TM involves > is this statement: > > "The initial claim that TM produces a unique state of > consciousness different than sleep has been refuted by > several EEG meditation studies which reported sleep-like > stages during this technique with increased alpha and > then theta power." > > Of course the EEG findings of "sleep-like stages" during > TM practice does *not* "refute" the claim that TM > produces a unique state of consciousness. Nowhere does > TM claim that this unique state is found *throughout* > the TM meditation period, to the contrary. > > One hopes this was an inadvertent straw man, not a > deliberate attempt by the researchers to mislead. But > even if inadvertent, as noted, that this statement was > made at all indicates that Vaj's researchers do not > have a good grasp of what TM *does* claim. And this in > turn calls into question how well they understand what > the TM studies are attempting to show. > > Bottom line, Vaj's reliance on this study (the one in > the Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness) as evidence > that TM research is no good is maintained in bad faith. > Vaj is correct in that well done science does not have to be repeated, but it is not always possible to know if that is the final say on a subject. Most of the studies on TM both my TM movement involved scientists and those outside of the movement are typically too small to definitively answer most questions. Characterising consciousness with physiological signatures is a tricky thing when no definition of what consciousness is or how it comes to be the way it is in experience is known. Many of the early studies on TM have been refuted, and I once heard MUM scientist Fred Travis say so many years ago, in the late 1990s. Dr Travis said that in light of the early studies being overturned, it was up to him to find out what the differences really are. For example Dr David Holmes tested experienced TM teachers and non-meditators to study arousal reducing effects, using better controlled conditions than Wallace and Benson used in their original research and found essentially no difference. Homles exposed his group to stressful situations and found the meditators did not do any better than the controls. This resulted in protests from the meditating community. Still Holmes only employed 20 people total in this study, so it should be considered preliminary, but what he did address was fixing the protocol that skewed the results of the original study. Sloppy protocol is responsible for skewing the results in many many experiments and is a particular problem with those who have heavily invested belief that the outcome should conform to a particular result. If we were to say that suspension of breath is a property of transcendental consciousness, and that in cosmic consciousness this transcendental value is maintained all the time, and we observe no suspension of breath if an athlete is running and breathing deeply but claims to have the experience of transcendence even so, we cannot say that suspension of breath is a property definitively correlated with the transcendent. One of the properties discovered early on was phase coherence of varying degrees during meditation between different parts of the brain, and this coherence seemed to persist even out of meditation in longer-term meditators. I believe more recently it has been found that the amount of coherence does not keep increasing, but its more or less invariable persistence over time is perhaps the best correlation with 'growth of consciousness'. Once could hypothesise that a persistent wide-spread synchronic coherence in the brain, that is not localised to any specific part of the brain is what we experience as the transcendent. For a scientist not given to metaphysics, this would mean that transcendence is a physical activity in the brain whose experiential correlate is transcendence. For metaphysicians this will not do. If the idea of unity makes any sense though, an exact correspondence between physiology and experience would hold. We have to ask the question whether consciousness is physical or not, or whether is makes any difference to say that consciousness creates physical reality versus physical reality creates consciousness. If everything is being, perhaps this is a question that creates the problem by categorising the elements of the argument in different categories when in fact, they are the same category. In being, everything is the same category, but if the mind, that is experience, is fragmented conceptually, and we cannot see through the verbal mapping of concepts onto raw, non-verbal experience, then the question seems to have significance. Now regarding the pulled paper by Dr Schneider et al. We do not know if the data was fudged or not, but some felt there were suspicions that it might have been, but the matter cannot be settled until the new data is incorporated, and the paper reviewed again. The following blogger, who in general seems to feel TM research is flawed by ideological tampering with data certainly seems to think so: http://transcendental-meditation-honestly.blogspot.com/ The following blog by an experienced medical journalist seems to be the first item related to the pulling of the paper: http://blogs.forbes.com/larryhusten/2011/06/28/new-concerns-raised-about-withdrawn-archives-meditation-paper/ This next blog appeared on the web site of the world's pre-eminent science journal Nature. http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/06/journal_pulls_meditation_paper.html and back to the first blogger, we have a report of a Wikipedia editor speaking of the troubles they were having with articles related to TM, with editors who came online removing all negative references to the practice and people in the organisation. There are a number of interesting links in this blog post. http://transcendental-meditation-honestly.blogspot.com/2010_04_01_archive.html Vaj may be jumping the gun on his critique of the pulled paper, but there seems to be precedent enough to always consider that it will turn out to be true. Funding sources, researcher bias, and general biases that occur when searching for something to test in a scientific experiment all lead to results that initially are exaggerated, and when re-tested with better controlled experiments, the results are much less, or sometimes non-existent. My own experience is the movement, and most in the organisation that I have met or seen do not display any of the neutrality required to do proper science and accommodate the results of scientific investigation in a completely honest way. Sometimes I think it is deliberately dishonest. I think this is very unfortunate. A religiously indoctrinated mind simply cannot understand the logical, emotional, and procedural neutrality required to do and evaluate science in a way that minimises personal bias.
