--- In [email protected], "sparaig" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In [email protected], TurquoiseB <no_reply@> wrote: > > > > --- In [email protected], "sparaig" <sparaig@> wrote: > > > > > > There's a difference between forging research, and > > > making questionable PR claims. > > > > Other than sequence, you mean? > > > > First you forge the research, and then you make the > > questionable PR claims. Fewer gullible people would > > be taken in if you did it the other way around. :-) > > Troll alert...
Either that, or accurate description of *most* of the "research" ever done on meditation -- TM or otherwise. The thing I'm parodying is True Believers Doing "Research." In many if not most cases they "know" what they're going to "find" before they ever start, because they've been *told* what they'll find by their traditions or their teachers. In many if not most cases they are doing this "research" with the full knowledge and/or support of the tradition or the teacher they represent, and so they are under pressure to "perform," to find the "right" results. The whole concept is bogus, in my opinion. The only way I would expect meaningful research ever to be done on meditation is if *none* of the researchers involved were involved or had *ever* been involved with the tradition representing the meditation tech- niques they are studying. Otherwise, IMO the tendency is going to be to "shape" the research to "fit" what they expect the "results" to be. The parallel to tobacco research funded by the tobacco companies -- as much as you'd like to deny it -- is apt. And then throw in a level of pressure on the "researchers" that the tobacco companies cannot exert: the powerful factor of approval/disapproval from a spiritual teacher they revere as more than human, coupled with the possibility that that the more-than- human teacher can excommunicate them from their chosen spiritual path at any time, and what you have is a recipe for self-deception. And I *include* most of the non-TM "meditation studies" in this description. I'll pay attention to the "research" the day that the techniques being measured are taught with zero suggestion to the meditators of what the expected results of the techniques they're practicing are supposed to be, and the day that the studies themselves are performed by researchers who have never been told what the expected results are supposed to be. Otherwise, the "results" of the "studies" are a foregone conclusion.
