‘ ..the ‘Not everyone agrees’ defense: “We don’t know..it is only probability, ‘correlation is not causation’, it is not certain, therefore it may not exist and it would cost too much to implement or make any change in public policy, better we should not do anything until we know for certain, we should even stonewall the correlation, fire the messengers if they get too far with this!’
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony...@yahoo.com> wrote : Brilliant. A fine extension of the scientific process (discourse). Thanks. I will forward a link to this to higher authorities for their review. yifuxero writes: Let's review some hypotheses and assumptions. 1. In regard to "modern" scientific inquiry, we may be in agreement that such methodologies are quite limited in scope, since there are vast bodies of phenomena beginning with simple psychic experiences that most people "believe" are true based on subjective experiences and the testimonials of others. This body of "unproved" phenomena extends into such areas as crop circles, alien appearances and abductions, cattle mutilations, Big Foot sightings, etc, and ultimately, the ME. ... 2. Most profoundly and of great importance, is the nature of Gnosis (Self-knowledge of the Atman leading to complete Brahman realization). We can go back to the early Gnostics to see how this as a Movement gradually gave way to Dualistic dogmatic religion. In the 20-th century prior to WWII, there were minor revivals such as the "I AM Movement". After WWII, we have Yogananda, Kirpal Sing, Eckankar,, etc; but most important, MMY. Ultimately, we come across (through subjective experience,) the Self - Purusha and find a true Paradox: The Self (Purusha) is indeed "experiential" but purely so, and as such, is not by It's very nature objectively provable or demonstrable to others. Thus, in terms of the ongoing evolutionary development of mankind (Cf. MMY, Eckart Tolle, and others); the hypothesis has been promulgated that the long term "Salvation" of individuals and of mankind is innately connected to Gnosis, rather than the dogma of belief systems and dualistic religions. Thus, the only way to "prove" Purusha is to experience It for yourself; and a tipping point in evolution will occur when vast numbers of people simply "overpower": those endowed with dualistic perception alone. This is the hypothesis of Tolle's "Heaven on Earth" concept. When large numbers of people are Self-aware, such Gnosis will simply take it for granted as being an intrinsic part of life, having no need for "modern science" to prove It's existence as the basis of reality. 3. OTOH, the ME is a SHAKTI-basic phenomena. Among those practicing TM for any significant length of time, a type of perception awakens in which Shakti as a subtle type of energy creeps into overall awareness, with a "Shakti-meter", allowing people to discriminate between various people and places radiating that Energy. In a sense, Shakti can be considered a subtle type of "field". Thus, the TMO's use of the term would be appropriate. 4. Unfortunately, at this state of modern scientific inquiry, there's no empirical evidence for the existence of . higher dimensions beyond our materialistic, naturalistic world. The fact that may people have experienced contact with Angels, the dead, and interdimensional phenomena is a moot point. Such personal testimonies maketh not what's acceptable as "science". If this were the case, nut cases claiming Alien abductions and others such as Scientologists AND the TMO would (and have!) attempted to make a spurious and dishonest claim for their own versions of what "should" be the true post-modern science. 5. Factually, we are dealing with MODERN scientific methods, not such futuristic model of what science "should" be like. If that were not the case, the TMO would (and does), have their own make-believe version of science, the Scientologists theirs, and the UFO-ologists theirs.. Do I "believe" in the existence of Angels, interdimensional entities, and Aliens, as well as very common psychic experiences. Yes! But all such beliefs are moot. There must be agreed-upon ground rules for exchanging information that conforms to accepted "rules" of science. Do I "believe" that the ME exists? Yes, but ..... 6. There's no objective way in modern science to measure the magnitude and range of the ME; and indeed, there's no SCIENTIFIC evidence for the existence of Shakti. This fact alone invalidates all of the MUM research involving the ME, since the ME is a Shakti-effect, NOT an actual Meissner-effect. The Meissner effect involves a real, observable form of material Shakti. The ME is based on an UNOBSERVABLE (but feelable) form of Shakti not even recognized to exist by modern science. Beyond this fact alone, all other considerations such as data analysis become secondary. Since the TMO can't prove the existence of the subtle Shakti, the whole hypothesis of ME becomes completely unsupportable 7. The MUM work fails to have adequate controls. The results are not a binary choice between such effects and "random" possibilities, but rather the influence of the SHAKTI vs other possible influences. Anybody can with equally (and nonsensical) validity - claim that such effects were due to Benjamin Creme's "Maitreya" or perhaps the Scientology God. Due to the unfathomable nature of karma, it's not possible to isolate individual effects from the complete Totality of existence. The causes likewise likewise can't be isolated. Whose to say that the prayers coming from Christians are not responsible. Why not the countless Pundits in India in thousands of sects, doing their Pujas and Yagyas? The idea that the TMO can isolate both the causes and effects with precision, from the Totality of existence, and then claiming that their statistical data proves such a relationship is totally preposterous!. 8. If the existence of subtle Shakti has been corroborated by scientific methods, please give the citation. If no such evidence an be provided, the proponents of such "field" effects have no foundation for their claims. WIKIPEDIA:. Robert L. Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_L._Park, research professor and former chair of the Physics Department at the University of Maryland, called the study a "clinic in data distortion".[14] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hagelin#cite_note-Park2000pp29-31-14 In 1994 a science satire magazine, Annals of Improbable Research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annals_of_Improbable_Research, "awarded" Hagelin the Ig Nobel Prize https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ig_Nobel_Prize for Peace, "for his experimental conclusion that 4,000 trained meditators caused an 18 percent decrease in violent crime in Washington, D.C."[34] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hagelin#cite_note-34[35] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hagelin#cite_note-35 ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony...@yahoo.com> wrote : In defense of the research it is said, “..in order to be published in a leading independent scientific research journal, our papers are subject to a rigorous review process by non-meditating scholars, most of whom are highly skeptical of our theory, and who intensively review our research and methods to insure that they meet the highest standard of research quality. Only a very small proportion of all scientific research of any kind is done well enough to be accepted into leading peer-reviewed journals.” "..Many people have many opinions on how to improve things-- better policing, healthier economies, more guns, less guns, etc. But all these interventions are hard to agree on or hard to implement.” -Article published in the FF Weekly Reader ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony...@yahoo.com> wrote : The dispute seems mainly to be over how science works. One could wonder about some of the skepticism given out on the internet, given some nature of some personal narrative of a hurt with the meditating movement or personal ideologies of some of the people who are in categorical vehemence against meditation and ™ in particular, if they could read this research with objectivity. “The more critical reason dominates, the more impoverished life becomes.. Overvalued reason has this in common with political absolutism: under its dominion, the individual is pauperized.” -Carl Gustav Jung ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony...@yahoo.com> wrote : In context these papers being published are movement ahead just doing the science evidently disputing the old saws of criticism. As painful as this current science seems to be for some of the skeptical, evidently for different reasons, the ‘replications’ and statistical p-value significance of this science are in fact noteworthy interesting science process in the postmodern. That's the problem: There's zero "controlled testing". Just another feeble attempt to prove the ME (The Maharishi - Effect, now called the Meissner-like effect.. I'm not saying there's no ME. It's simply beyond the capacity of modern science to measure it objectively. Correlation is not causation. How many times do people need to repeat that? Yes, more controlled study is certainly needed to to drill down into understanding the Meissner-like effect mechanism of meditation. Healthy skepticism of the correlation hardly negates the certainty of the published research. “..There is a 3 in 10,000 trillion probability that the reductions in the homicide rate could simply be due to chance.” It only takes what? Evidently only about 2000 people meditating in the same place at the same time doing TM and the TM-sidhi program. New, solid, published, peer-reviewed research has indicated once again (in replication) how meditation can change the world for the better. -FF Weekly Reader ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <archonan...@yahoo.com> wrote : Thanks. If one or other of the authors is still at MUM maybe you could contact them. From: "dhamiltony...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Friday, March 3, 2017 11:52 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Statistical Fact: new Maharishi Meisnner-like Effect article published Yes, and apparently there are more papers coming to be published with a similar level of certainty based on publicly available public health stats. The 'replication' in certainty of their observations coming in to an aggregate as statistical fact seems to get more and more uncomfortable for some critics who may for ideological reason would like to believe otherwise, sort of like it seems for science-deniers in other areas of public policy and publicly available data sets. These papers on meditation will probably be available to read from other channels in time, places like Truth about ™ and Honest Truth about ™. They are not in the farm journals I subscribe to. I will see who I run into around here as to getting copies that we can all easily read. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <archonan...@yahoo.com> wrote : .. is there a published data set of dome numbers since the construction of the domes? It would be nice to see. I am not disputing the possibility there is the stated effect, but that there are other correlations that are just as plausible such as safer cars. The promotional PDF states, "For example, the reduction in motor vehicle fatality rates could not be explained by the total number of vehicle miles traveled, weather patterns, the proportion of young drivers, improved vehicle safety features, improved roadway conditions, or alcohol consumption." But the promotional document gives no indication how those conclusions were arrived at. The paper needs to disprove these alternative explanations, not just dismiss them. Maybe they are in the full paper? The federal government seems to think auto safety features are the reason for the fatality decline, which is the most plausible explanation. There is also Journal Quality as a metric for published research.There is something called the h-index which is a metric used to evaluate this. The top Journals Nature, and Science, have an h-index of 948 and 915 respectively while the Journal of Consciousness Studies ranks 49, not very good by comparison, though some journals rank 0. Another ranking called SJR (SCImago Journal Rank) has Nature and Science at 21 and 13 respectively, and the Journal of Consciousness Studies ranks at 0.25. These rankings indicate that poorer quality scientific papers get published in this consciousness journal, that fewer scenentists are interested in stuff published here. If you are a scientist, not very good, and want to be published, then you look for lower ranked journals to try to get published. The journal wants almost $30 for a PDF of the full paper, which is only summarized by the PDF posted here. Does one of the scientists have a copy they could send you which you could post? They usually have these things on hand. The Contribution of Proposed Field Effects of Consciousness to th...: Ingenta Connect http://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/imp/jcs/2017/00000024/F0020001/art00003 The Contribution of Proposed Field Effects of Consciousness to th...: Ingen... By Cavanaugh, K.L. http://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/imp/jcs/2017/00000024/F0020001/art00003 Another point, Scientific Journals are not Scripture. But continue to meditate. The byproducts of meditation, whatever they are, are not as important as enlightenment. From: "dhamiltony...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, March 2, 2017 12:04 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Statistical Fact: new Maharishi Meisnner-like Effect article published Observations and correlations about meditation and well-being were made throughout the last half of the 20th Century in published pilot research. A rightly skeptical criticism of that body of scientific research conducted has been that much which was substantial was without “replication”. The challenge in 'repetition' from a general decline in the teaching of meditation to new practitioners and the separation of many experienced practitioners from organized group practice of group meditations in the 1990’s and 2000’s was then obtaining repetition in that scope of research occurring previously in the 1970’s and 1980’s in the shear size of those previous meditating groups to measure with controls. This scale of size recurred again, occurring for a period of time running between 2007 and 2010. These published papers as hypothesis testing appear now as 'critical' replications in the correlation process of science. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony...@yahoo.com> wrote : ArcherAngel, It would seem you could legitimately lodge your beefs on the research with the journals themselves and their peer review processes. It would be interesting to hear their responses. You did notice and open in the original post on this topic that a pdf of the research was included? As replication testing of hypothesis these papers seems significant, like to.. The probability that the reduced trend for motor vehicle fatalities could simply be due to chance was reported to be 3.7 in 10 million million and for fatalities due to other accidents, less than 8.4 in 1 million. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <archonan...@yahoo.com> wrote : There are other explanations for this outside the TM organization's universe, it is attributed to better vehicle construction, and now that vehicles are appearing that can sense potential danger, the drop in fatalities should continue to go down. Correlation is not causation. One of the problems of designing a study is making sure there are no other plausible explanations for an effect, something TM scientists are particularly adept at avoiding. Those years also included the beginning of the recession and included large fluctuations in gasoline prices, perhaps people also drove less as prices increased. "Federal transportation officials believe that much of the credit for saving lives in accidents goes to the enhanced safety systems that are now available in many automobiles." Traffic Accident Fatalities Drop to Lowest Level in Decades https://www.helmerlegal.com/blog/Traffic-Accident-Fatalities-Drop-to-Lowest-Level-in-Decades/
