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Much of the research around meditation and mindfulness has serious flaws

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Re: Much of the research around meditation and mindfulness has serious flaws

#81

Post by Sandorie »

vidarh wrote: post #44
Sandorie wrote: post #9

Between being a placebo and a straight up pseudoscience(if I even were to call it a “science”) in my opinion “mindfulness” is a type of pavlovian conditioning design to establish a self-empathy defense mechanism within our minds. I’ve been to “mindfulness events” for executives and corporate, where people claim to let go of their ego only to look down on anyone who is not as “open minded “ as they are. Overall is ano…

I'm trying, but I can't find a way to understand what you describe in terms of my experience with mindfulness practice. Conditioning for what ? Defense against what ? It just seems entirely disconnected from my experience, which is "just" a combination of deep relaxation and a sensation of being more alert to (some) mental impulses rather than blindly following them (all the time). It is not a miracle cure for anythi…

I agree with your argument discribing the fact that, I should not judge a single chronological event as means to an end. I should rather reason by first principle rather than by analogy.

Yet experiences are a often influenced by various psychological and environmental componets. The fact that we have different experiences is absolutely natural, thus I’m capable of comprehending your argument.

I was simply stating my thought analogy based on my past experiences.

Since is rather hard to measure such statements (in a quantitative way) I shall be skeptical of other people’s “experiences”. Thus staying true to my thought process, unless I manage to find a comon ground by truly “experiencing” what some call “mindfulness “.

Re: Much of the research around meditation and mindfulness has serious flaws

#82

Post by anbende »

Clinical psych graduate student and researcher studying, among other things, group mindfulness interventions in a clinical setting. Thought I'd weigh in.

While there is a lot of not so good research surrounding mindfulness, there is some decent research as well, some of which is mentioned in the original article. Mindfulness-based interventions like Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Mindfulness Basic Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) do show, as stated, at least moderate effects for stress, anxiety and general well-being. The difficulty that I'm finding in my own research (mostly still unpublished) is that these groups don't do much more than just being in any group would, and actually my current work is on parsing group vs meditation-specific effects (outcome variance decomposition). Meditation-specific effects are, indeed, proving elusive.

But there are a couple of things at play here. The first is that, it's nearly impossible to separate the effects of ANY short-term treatment from so-called "group" or "therapist" effects. One of the major findings of the last 10-15 years is that a therapist or group-leader's ability to convey confidence, warmth and understanding and to establish rapport is a massively more important factor than technique, at least in the short-term. We're talking 80+ of treatment gains. Of course, to do that you generally have to have at least an effective-seeming technique, and one that you legitimately believe in, but it doesn't seem to matter which one. Again, this is in the short-term.

The second issue, is that virtually all studies in any clinical intervention are really quite short. MBSR is 8 sessions. How good do you think a person can really get at meditation in 20 minutes per day for 50ish days? The answer is, not very. And that's true for other cognitive and behavioral treatments as well. Studies limit the length of their tested interventions to between 8 and 20 weeks, and usually on the lower end, for funding and convenience reasons. Then they (we) find that group and therapist factors trump technique. It's really not that surprising when you think about it. It's not that the techniques don't work, it's just that it takes as long to master your mind as it does to master anything else, 100s to 1000s of hours. And that research, which would take years and be extremely expensive, just isn't done.

So yes, a lot of the mindfulness work out there is hype. But it doesn't really bear on whether mindfulness is effective, just whether a person can make massive gains in 2-4 months. My own view, is that mindfulness is an effective tool for teaching awareness and attention control. I use it in conjunction with other cognitive and behavioral techniques with my own clients.

Review paper on mindfulness effect sizes for anxiety and depression. I've seen others which found moderate rather than large treatment gains:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2848393/

The "Dodo Hypothesis" that the bulk of therapeutic treatment gains are the result of "common factors" (therapist effects, rapport, empathy, etc.)

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wps.20238/full

I think the second one is behind a paywall, but you should be able to grab the DOI and "find it".

Re: Much of the research around meditation and mindfulness has serious flaws

#83

Post by lukev »

moretai wrote: post #72
lukev wrote: post #32

I normally wouldn't weigh in here, since I am the furthest thing possible from an expert, but after even a little dabbling in meditation I can see some major misconceptions in the other comments. It isn't about being bored, or about any of the benefits that may or may not occur. Meditation is a useful discipline because it is about training the mind to (a) become conscious of and "reify" individual thoughts and sensa…

>Once you have these skills you can (presumably) use them for other things and to achieve various effects. But it starts there. They said the same thing about brain exercises like Luminosity. The brain is way more complex, and you can't just hack your way to becoming the ultimate programmer. Perhaps there are legitamate factors that lead to unproductive and stressed out workers.

Well there are at least two differences:

- There are a lot of scientific studies (however dubious, see the original post) about the effects of meditation: there are none about Luminosity.

- Meditation has been practiced for millennia with entire cultures and philosophies built around it. Luminosity is a 6-year-old app with a good marketing team.

Neither of these things are definitive proof of course. But I think they are evidence (in the Bayesian sense) that there might be something there.

The cool thing about meditation though, is that while I'd want to wait for scientific evidence before "prescribing" it broadly, there's no barrier to an individual trying it out themselves. You'll either get something out if it or you won't. If you do, sure, it could be the placebo effect, but as has been pointed out, even if meditation is nothing more than a deliberate activation of the placebo effect, that's a pretty cool result.

Re: Much of the research around meditation and mindfulness has serious flaws

#84

Post by maroonblazer »

jokoon wrote: post #77

Not really surprised. How do you even do measurements in a brain to see if it has any effect? It's already quite tricky to make sure anti depressants work, so I would not trust meditation. At best you just make people believe doing it will make them better, so as long as they believe it, it might be reassuring enough. I don't tell people to do meditation, I tell them to go to a quiet place outside, in a park or woods…

>It's already quite tricky to make sure anti depressants work, so I would not trust meditation.

That's an odd comparison to make given these are two radically different therapies. One doesn't follow from the other.

>Stop being busy, that's what people need.

Relaxing and meditating aren't synonymous. Simply reducing one's workload doesn't necessarily address the issues that might indicate meditation as a course of treatment.

Re: Much of the research around meditation and mindfulness has serious flaws

#85

Post by jamesrcole »

sevensor wrote: post #62

> Major commercial players in the meditation space The sheer insanity of this phrase astounds me. There's an industry devoted to meditation. For such a thing to exist, you have to start by convincing people that they're not meditating right. Which means some people are better at it than others and you should worry about not being as good. What's next, competitive meditation?

> There's an industry devoted to meditation. For such a thing to exist, you have to start by convincing people that they're not meditating right

The second sentence does not follow from the first. Why do you think it does?

Re: Much of the research around meditation and mindfulness has serious flaws

#86

Post by DanBC »

vanderZwan wrote: post #70
DanBC wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was introduced to mindfulness practice as a therapy for depression several years ago at my university. They were clear it was a new approach for clinical use (though building on a long history of meditation) and that although the initial research results were promising it was still very much a developing area. It would be great if that's the approach other people were taking. Not everyone does this. Some of them…

> But I know people who are being denied any other option. Am I correct in guessing you are talking about a work setting, where the situation is similar to something like: "if you're overworked we're not going to address the root problem by lowering the amount of work to a sensible load, we're going to make you do more work in the form of mental exercises to strengthen your resilience, so we can burden you with more…

No. I'm talking about an English NHS health settting.

Re: Much of the research around meditation and mindfulness has serious flaws

#87

Post by DanBC »

jokoon wrote: post #77

Not really surprised. How do you even do measurements in a brain to see if it has any effect? It's already quite tricky to make sure anti depressants work, so I would not trust meditation. At best you just make people believe doing it will make them better, so as long as they believe it, it might be reassuring enough. I don't tell people to do meditation, I tell them to go to a quiet place outside, in a park or woods…

> to sit and do nothing and let their thoughts go around.

Pretty dangerous if those thoughts are "I am worthless and no-one would miss me if I die" or "my family would be better off if I kill myself".

Re: Much of the research around meditation and mindfulness has serious flaws

#88

Post by kranner »

moretai wrote: post #76
submeta wrote: post #41

There is no need for scientific proof. I observe that being mindful changes things for me: The way I listen to people, the way I eat, the way I handle rejection or anger or any other feeling. I realize that being mindful (vs mindlessly and blindly doing things) sharpens my senses, makes me think clearer, makes me change perspectives, create more categories or realize that I think within categories. I got in touch wit…

If you need a book to meditate, you are probably doing it wrong.

How else is one supposed to learn without access to a teacher?

Re: Much of the research around meditation and mindfulness has serious flaws

#89

Post by Sandorie »

mikekchar wrote: post #71
icebraining wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the quote, but I still don't get the relevance to the first post, sorry. Can you describe it more explicitly?

Not the OP and not in any way an expert, but the way I read it: the original post is completely correct -- insofar as it has been written. One could think, "I have examined it and determined it to be completely without merit". Having done so, there is no further need to examine -- because it is without merit. This is obvious. On the other hand, you can think of it like the proverbial box, of which we are often encour…

I see where you are coming from and I thank you for taking your time to answer in such detailed oriented form.

Is true that “if you look for it, you will find it”, Yet experiences are a often influenced by various psychological and environmental componets. The fact that we have different experiences is absolutely natural, thus I’m capable of comprehending your argument.

I was simply stating my thought analogy based on my past experiences.

Since is rather hard to measure such statements (in a quantitative way) I shall be skeptical of other people’s “experiences”. Thus staying true to my thought process, until I manage to find a common ground by truly “experiencing” what some call “mindfulness “.

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