Talk:Transcendental Meditation research

Present version lead/paragraph 2

Independent systematic reviews have found that the research to date is insufficient to draw any conclusions as to the effects, if any, of TM in managing high blood pressure and anxiety. It is difficult to determine definitive effects of meditation practices in healthcare, as the quality of research has design limitations and a lack of methodological rigor. Part of this difficulty is that studies have the potential for bias due to the connection of researchers to the TM organization, and enrollment of subjects with a favorable opinion of TM.

Removal of Book

I'm more than a little puzzled by the deletion of the reference to the Gablinger book. What do you mean "not available"? It's available from Google Books, Amazon UK and several sites in Germany, including from the publisher.[1]. And for those, like me, not inclined to shell out the money to buy it, it's available from at least three libraries according to WorldCat - Yale, the British Library and the National Library of Israel. [2] I'm sure that inter-library exchange could be arranged with your nearest university library if someone wanted to read it. WP:RS and WP:V do not require that a source be available for free online, or even for pay online. Nor does it require that it be on the shelves of your local library. WP:SOURCEACCESS It is most definitely available. Fladrif (talk) 17:07, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

The policy WP:SOURCEACCESS says: Other people should in principle be able to check that material in a Wikipedia article has been published by a reliable source. This implies nothing about ease of access to sources: some online sources may require payment, while some print sources may only be available in university libraries. WikiProject Resource Exchange may be able to help obtain source material. It seems open to interpretation, as are most WP policies and guidelines. However after getting additional input from this essay, Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Cost which says: The costs or difficulties of verifying a source do not impact on its reliability, as long as it can be verified in a reasonable time frame by someone. Where a source is difficult to verify, or in a language other than English, many editors appreciate the courtesy of supplying the relevant paragraph and ensuring it can be read by English language readers. When sources of equal quality are available the ease of access may be preferred, but if sources of higher quality are difficult to verify, that difficulty alone is not a reason to disregard such sources or replace them with lower-quality ones. I'm inclined to say that Fladrif was correct in replacing the source.-- — Keithbob • Talk • 20:15, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Note that this book was in the Further Reading section, and wasn't being used as a source. Therefore, I don't understand why WP:SOURCEACCESS is relevant. A better guide might be WP:FURTHERREADING. What's the point of having a book in the Further Reading section that's not generally available for reading? I can't buy it on Amazon or Barnes & Noble or Half.com, and I can't get it through inter-library loan. (In my experience, libraries won't lend books via ILL that are rare.) There's no preview in Google Books. In addition, the description of the book on the publisher's website suggests that the book has very little to do with TM research.[3] TimidGuy (talk) 10:33, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

As I wrote above, you can buy through a number of sources, including from AmazonUK or directly from the publisher. Something like 10 million people are within an hour walk, bike, bus or tube ride of a free copy at a library (~8 million in London, 1 million around New Haven, another 1 million in Jerusalem). I'd call a book that anybody can order online and that 10 million people have free access to without breaking a sweat "generally available for reading". I haven't read it, (I didn't add it to this list, I didn't bother to look who did) but the summary does indicate that it has a great deal to do with the research and how that research was used to rebrand TM. I would think that it should be added to further reading for the TM Movement article as well, and if somebody tracks down a copy it is likely an excellent source as well. Fladrif (talk) 16:06, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Good point about source policy not necessarily applying to further reading sections. However I don't see any harm in having it on the further reading list since as Fladrif says it is available to a significant group of people. I do however, feel it is clearly out of place here and should be placed on the TMM article further reading list and removed from this list.-- — Keithbob • Talk • 17:32, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree, based on the summary, that this book probably has more relevance to the TM Movement article than to this article, so I have no problem in KBob moving it there. Fladrif (talk) 17:37, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

An excellent discussion, on the part of all those above. I appreciate the research done by by Fladrif and by TG, which was more thorough than mine. I was taking an unduly North America-centric point of view. Let's keep it, but I agree it makes sense to shift it over to TMM. EMP (talk 20:59, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

 Done-- — Keithbob • Talk • 19:34, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Removal of cardio in elderly + Lindberg ref

I have removed the following one-sentence section, with its reference. Doc James suggested in an edit note Mar 23 that the reference here, an integrative review, is not adequate. I am inclined to agree. I think it is important to look at three things in evaluating a ref for health information: 1) the quality of the publication; 2) the academic standing of the author; and 3) the importance of the information, ie, how large a claim or statement is being made. In this case, although the journal is actually pretty respectable--Geriatric Nursing comes from a major scientific publisher, and has an impact factor and it is in the same range as some other refs in this same article everyone seems satisfied with, such as Wien. Klin. Wochenschr--however, the claim being made is large--that TM improves cardio health and slows aging in an entire age-group. And the author's scientific qualifications are not strong. While Lindberg has several scientific publications listed on Google Scholar, most of her publications have been in the field of health administration. Until a stronger reference for it can be found, I think the article is better without this content. But if anyone objects, I am of course willing to restore the material and discuss it further. EMP (talk 19:32, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Cardiovascular function in the elderly

A 2005 integrative review said that research shows that TM improves cardiovascular function in the elderly and slows the aging process.

Here's the problem

Here's the problem I have with this page's structure. The best available secondary sources emphasize that the published literature on meditation is of very poor scientific quality. In fact, the lack of scientific rigor in the meditation literature makes it essentially impossible to draw any scientifically grounded conclusions about the efficacy of meditation. Our article briefly (and, frankly, misleadingly) acknowledges this reality, and then goes on to spend about 200 kb recapitulating the results of all of these poor-quality studies. That structure violates WP:WEIGHT - by giving far more weight to individual, low-quality primary studies than to reliable secondary sources - and it violates WP:MEDRS by mining primary sources to "rebut" our reliable secondary sources. MastCell ^Talk 17:21, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Why would top medical journals, such as those put out by the American Medical Association and American Heart Association, publish such crappy research? The Ospina review should not govern this article. For one thing, it's been archived as no longer current. In addition, it's been criticized in the literature for requiring double blinding. How do you double blind a meditation study in which the subject doesn't know whether he's receiving health education or a particular medication practice? A new AHRQ review coming out uses a very different method of assessment that's more appropriate to behavioral research, and the authors of that review have criticized the approach of the earlier review. There were many meta-analyses in Ospina. It's not right to delete all but one group. There are research reviews that include the TM/PMR finding, for example. And quite a few literature reviews include the overall finding that TM had a statistically significant reduction of blood pressure. TimidGuy (talk) 17:42, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

And as far as I know, this article doesn't cite a single primary study. I believe it exclusively uses reliable secondary sources. TimidGuy (talk) 17:44, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

That's fair; perhaps I should re-state my concern. First of all, we need to use the most up-to-date sources. If there's a new AHRQ review, then we should replace the Ospina review (I haven't seen a new one, but please let me know if it's out). Secondly, I take your point about secondary sources, but given the proliferation of such sources we need to use some kind of metric to weight them. The AHRQ is one of the gold standards in terms of systematic reviews, and it makes sense to weight their view heavily on that basis. MastCell ^Talk 18:07, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure the new AHRQ review isn't out yet, but I expect it will be out by this summer at the latest. It covers different territory than the first one: meditation programs for stress and well-being, whereas Ospina covered cardio research and physiological effects. Here's the protocol for the new AHRQ.[4]. They give their rationale for using a different method of quality assessment than that used by Ospina. I don't have a problem with giving weight to recent systematic reviews/meta-analyses. A good one might be the 2012 systematic review/meta-analysis by Sedlmeier that DJ deleted from the TM article. It was published in an absolutely top psychology journal. I think the Anderson blood pressure meta-analyses could be given weight. It included three studies outside the scope of the 2007 AHRQ review: the 2006 independent study published by the AMA (which came after the Sept 2005 cutoff for the 2007 AHRQ) and two studies by Vernon Barnes on hypertensive adolescents (excluded by AHRQ because they only consider research on adults). I don't see giving much weight to the two Cochrane reviews, since between them they analyzed only a single small TM study. Cochrane 2006 was narrowly focused on research on individuals with clinically diagnosed anxiety disorders, with just one TM study falling within their narrow scope, whereas there are over 75 studies on TM and trait anxiety, including RCTs. Sedlmeier does a meta-analysis of the strongest of these. I wouldn't have a problem with noting the results of the 1980 study included in Cochrane 2006, but can't see why, for example, that it would deserve more weight than Sedlmeier just because of the name "Cochrane." TimidGuy (talk) 11:11, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Cochrane reviews are the gold standard, to not include them would make no sense at all. IRWolfie- (talk) 08:20, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Omissions

I'm curious about how journal articles were selected for presentation here. The history section cites the 1970 Science paper by Robert Keith Wallace, a TM icon, which claimed that TM induced a unique "wakeful hypometabolic state". Strangely, though, our article fails to mention that at least two attempts by independent researchers to reproduce Wallace's results were strikingly unsuccessful.

Researchers at the University of Michigan found that TM had no effect on biochemical markers of stress and was biologically indistinguishable from simply resting (PMID 775639). And researchers at the University of Washington found that TM meditators spent much of their time asleep, rather than in any sort of unique state of consciousness (PMID 1108200). Both of these papers specifically mention Wallace's paper and their inability to confirm or reproduce his results. Both groups published their findings in Science, like Wallace.

Is there some reason that we mention Wallace's study but not the subsequent failure of independent researchers to confirm his results? MastCell ^Talk 04:36, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Good question. One reason is that the sources that talk about the history of TM research, such as Freeman and Harrington, typically just discuss this first study and don't mention Pagano or Michaels or other subsequent studies in the substantial body of research on physiological effects.

The only reason we're reporting an individual study here is its historical interest -- it was the first study on TM and considered to be pioneering in mind/body medicine. A 2009 review in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences referred to it as "classic."

We could mention Pagano, but then it would seem appropriate to put his study in the context of subsequent research, as well as possibly mentioning that he later concluded that the finding in his 1976 study was atypical.

Similarly, if we were to mention the finding of Michaels, then we might want to include the multiple subsequent studies on biochemical markers, such as those done in the lab of Archie Wilson at UC Irvine. Several of these explicitly say their findings differ from Michaels'. Also, I believe the study by Michaels wasn't, strictly speaking, an attempt to replicate Wallace since he didn't look at biochemical markers.

If you want to get a sense for the literature on TM and EEG and where things currently stand (including meditation and sleep), check out this comprehensive review from 2006.[5] It also briefly touches on biochemical markers. EMP (talk 22:06, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

List of ineffective cancer treatments

I checked out the only source which mentioned cancer, unless I missed something. It said that meditation (not specifically TM) could be helpful in improving cancer patients' moods but was not effective in curing cancer itself. It didn't say that anyone ever claimed it could or if it was even tried for that. Based on that I removed the "see also" link to List of ineffective cancer treatments. BayShrimp (talk) 16:11, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Why? "See also" links don't categorize the article topic (MOS:SEEALSO : "The links in the 'See also' section do not have to be directly related to the topic of the article because one purpose of 'See also' links is to enable readers to explore tangentially related topics."). Since meditation is offered in combination with cancer treatments, and since the ACS thinks it it worth pointing out it does not treat cancer itself, this is just such a tangent readers might want to follow: we do mention meditation in our Alternative cancer treatments article, along with other mental techniques with have been proposed as cancer treatment. Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 16:25, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

But still the article itself and the source cited do not say that TM has ever been considered as a cancer treatment, although maybe it has. BTW I have never practiced meditation but I could see how it could be helpful in preventing cancer since it is said to reduce stress which weakens the immune system. And of course I also see the danger of relying on any alternative treatment at the neglect of regular medical help. Just wanted to clear that up. BayShrimp (talk) 16:37, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

I think the point from my perspective is that a See Also link is (as MOS says) "tangential". The reliable sources plot this tangent for us by categorizing meditation as an ineffective cancer treatment - which allows the reader to follow to that whole topic area. As I see it, this is just a classic example of what "see also" links are for. Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 16:46, 27 October 2013 (UTC)