Judy, from the beginning I've said that it was my interpretation which can neither be right or wrong. Anyway, I remember the last sentence as being very dramatic, something along the lines of: if such an idea can be supported by the scientific method then we need to question the scientific method itself.
On Thursday, March 27, 2014 11:10 AM, "authfri...@yahoo.com" <authfri...@yahoo.com> wrote: Share, I've read that essay several times, and the last sentence, in the context of the rest of the essay, is what I'm talking about. I stand by what I said (and what Salyavin said). You are simply wrong to suggest the guy's worldview or trust in the scientific method was shaken. The chap was very clear that he did not find the study's conclusions at all convincing. His only problem with the scientific method was that it let a study like this one get through the peer review process and be published in a respectable journal. Judy, I stand by what I said which is based on the last sentence of the article. That sentence indicated more than just *tightening up* the scientific method. On Thursday, March 27, 2014 10:32 AM, "authfriend@..." <authfriend@...> wrote: http://jcr.sagepub.com/content/32/4.toc It'll cost you $30 to see the text of either the Editor's Comment or the study itself; the abstract of the study you can see on the site. The editor's worldview wasn't shaken in the slightest, nor was he questioning the scientific method. Salyavin's right: What he was suggesting was that the scientific method needed to be tightened up if it could be used to support the TM study's findings. Salyavin, how do you determine what the crime rate was going to be without the intervention? If you had to know that for sure, no study on any method of crime reduction could be considered valid. (The TM folks took a shot with the later DC study at predicting the crime rate without the intervention via a very complicated statistical method--Lawson will remember what it's called.) salyavin, mind you, he was questioning Scientific Method, not any methods used in that particular study, which would be listed in Collected Papers and that would give one the Journal citation. I'll see if I can find it. It was a long time ago. I don't suppose there is a link to this essay, anyone? Lawson, I remember when I stopped believing in scientific objectivity. Journal of Conflict Resolution. Research done on the Maharishi Effect, I think in Israel. A professor from Univ. of West Virginia on the journal's board. They published his essay along with the research. At the end of his essay he says, and I'm paraphrasing, that if such an idea can be supported by scientific method, then we need to question the scientific method itself. My interpretation: his world view was so shook by the research that he had to do something, anything to invalidate that research. Even if it meant he was invalidating all such research in the process! I wouldn't take quite such a dramatic position about it. It's not like it's a reasonable idea. By reasonable I mean it isn't sympathetic to any other ideas we have about society or psychology or physics. In fact we would have to ditch pretty much everything in order to accommodate it. So he's right to be wary, but without reading the article itself I don't know what he meant about questioning the method. With such a wishy-washy idea as the ME we might need to reinforce the SM in some way in case we are kidding ourselves with statistical fluctuations etc. My comment on the ME is that in order to say you have lowered the crime rate you'd have to know what the crime rate was going to be. It never looks to me when I look at the raw data that something magical has taken place, the crime rate goes up and down daily and the TMO never seem able to lower it more than the amount it usually fluctuates anyway! If it went to zero every time Nabby and the boys were in town we'd have to believe it but it's obviously open to interpretation hence the wariness in the Journals. They have to be wary, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. As it is, I think the ME has been shown to be wrong because of the amount of courses that were supposed to be being monitored and the data never got released. Selective publishing is the worst science of all because if you can't see how many tails have been tossed, as well as the heads, then you can't draw meaningful conclusions. Since the pundit project started 10 years ago, it isn't like the world entered a period of peace and joy is it? Not in any way that I noticed. I think it's admirable that journalists and judges and scientists aim for objectivity. I also think that what's most admirable is to accept that we humans are never 100% objective and incorporate that idea into all our findings, conclusions and declarations. On Thursday, March 27, 2014 3:50 AM, "LEnglish5@..." <LEnglish5@...> wrote: Fred has asked some of the most prominent researchers into Buddhist meditation why they don't take the PC research seriously. The response is always along the lines of: show me a Western theory that suggests that it is important, and I will. Anomalous measurements that are consistently found in the right circumstances, apparently aren't of interest to "real" scientists -only stuff guided by theory. Of course, everyone knows the story of John Ellis, Director of Research at CERN, who, as a junior researcher at CERN, found some weird flaw in his cloud-chamber photographic plates, and rather than dismissing it outright, he went back and found similar flaws in other plates that he had missed. He then went around and fished many, MANY examples of similar flaws out of garbage bins, always happening in specific circumstances, and published. Everyone else had dismissed it as being of no interest because no Western theory predicted what was on the plates, so they assumed that it was trash. It got a write-up as the cover article of Discover, and made his career. L ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote : --
