8 ms·

"start meditating" Research has not shown that meditation beats a placebo Studies about meditation are usually of poor quality. Source: http://blogs.scientif

by Simp 12y ago

"start meditating" Research has not shown that meditation beats a placebo Studies about meditation are usually of poor quality. Source: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2013/03/08/research-has-not-shown-that-meditation-beats-a-placebo/ http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2013/03/08/r...

stinos 12y ago
Research has not shown that meditation beats a placebo Isn't that sort of irrelevant here? I think the OP's point is that it helps, not that it helps better than something else (wahtever that may be, even a placebo)?
- return0 12y ago
  If it doesn't help more than a placebo, then it doesn't help at all.
  - stinos 12y ago
    Wordplay? If it helps just as much (which technically is also 'not more'), it could still help since a placebo might help. Hell, even if it would help 'less' than a placebo it might still be helping since I didn't quantify exactly how much :P
    - return0 12y ago
      By that logic meditation also harms T levels. Not more than a placebo, but still harms them. Zero can be a positive or negative number.
  - vidarh 12y ago
    A placebo often helps substantially. That is why we tend to test with a placebo rather than nothing at all, in order to measure the effect of what we want to test rather than the ability of our mind to influence our body. And the effect is not merely psychological. Often placebo produces measurable responses.
    - return0 12y ago
      Still though, the idea behind placebos is that they 're the most convenient thing to do compared to the alternative. It doesn't justify the suggestion to "meditate to increase T" more than "take a sugar pill to increase T"
      - vidarh 12y ago
        The idea of placebos is to attempt to introduce a "noise floor" of sorts that lets you get an idea for how much of the measured effect is actually caused by what is being measured. Generally you want a placebo that makes the test subject unable to tell which is the placebo. That will not be the case with just handing people a sugar pill and being honest about what it is. To have an effect of a sugar pill in such a setting you would have to tell people there is a chance the pill is some form of medication intended to produce similar effects. The problem with that is that if the effects of meditation are just placebo, what you end up measuring is the strength of peoples beliefs about the efficacy of meditation vs. the efficacy of drugs - you're not comparing like with like, and can't rule out additive effects of combining the two (whether or not they're both caused by the placebo effect) either. And even if it is all placebo, that does not mean it may not be justified to suggest to meditate. In fact, it is a long standing debate of medical ethics whether - and if so when - it might sometimes be justified to utilize placebos as medical treatment, because it can often have real, measurable physical effects on peoples health. The issue with that is that you'd be lying to a patient, and it might undermine peoples trust in the medical profession. That is not an issue with an off the cuff suggestion to people to meditate from someone not claiming to be a doctor. Also, I haven't seen anyone here suggest meditating to increase T, but giving an off the cuff remark suggesting meditating to address "psychological worries" people might have 10-20% of the time. Serious psychological issues needs professional treatment, but I took his comment, given the context, the term "worries", and the implication they'd only be there 10-20% of the time to mean general stress and light performance anxieties, in which case meditation either works for you or it doesn't. If it does, it does not matter if it works because of the placebo effect or not. If it doesn't, then no harm done and you can consider TRT. The point of his comment seemed to be that most people do not need TRT, but fall in the normal range and should consider other factors first. I'm saying that as someone who will seriously consider TRT when I'm older (I'm turning 40 this year)
collyw 12y ago
Placebo is an effective harm free way of improving many conditions. Why dismiss it so readily?
- mackwic 12y ago
  The question is not if Placebo is an efficient method. We know for sure that it is. The question is if training and practicing meditation is better than doing nothing. If you don't beat the placebo, it could mean that there's nothing to train and practice.
  - vidarh 12y ago
    It is meaningless to speculate on this without a concrete paper doing a concrete comparison of a specific concrete form of meditation vs. a concrete form of placebo, and without knowing whether or not the placebo was compared to a control group doing nothing. You're right, it could mean there's nothing to train and practice. It also could mean there'd be a substantial placebo effect and a big gap from "doing nothing" to either the placebo or meditation, in which case, even if meditation were to turn out to be 100% placebo effect it would still be worthwhile to train and practice unless said researchers were to come up with a placebo that works just as well with less time spent. What I know is that meditation has substantial subjective benefits for me. I don't care if that's 100% placebo effect and/or if I'm just tricking myself in other ways. Because you know what? It doesn't matter. Meditation makes me feel relaxed. It makes me feel as if I get insights into my mind and thought processes. It makes me feel like I have more energy. It make me feel more in control and in touch of my emotions and the world in general. No matter the actual biochemical and psychological reasons for those feelings, they're still just as worthwhile outcomes to me. That's easy to lose sight of. Beating a placebo is an important measure when looking at drugs, because they pretty much all have potential risks and downsides (including the downside of cost). Showing provable effects is also important if considering prescribing meditation practice for psychological disorders, for example, because it could mean avoiding other treatment. It is also worthwhile in order to learn more about the processes involved, and see what effects can be proven. But it is largely uninteresting when considering casual meditation for someone who expects only subjective effects on mental state. In that case, what matters is mainly whether the perceived effects are sufficiently positive for someone to find it worthwhile to continue. If it's all a trick of the mind, then fine. It still feels great.
dood 12y ago
That meditation research has historically been inconclusive and of poor quality does not mean it doesn't do anything. Also, meditation research has come a long way since the studies cited in your source. Something I dug up quickly: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/americanbuddhist/2014/01/the-effectiveness-of-meditation-a-meta-analysis.html http://www.patheos.com/blogs/americanbuddhist/2014/01/the-ef...
- failed_ideas 12y ago
  Follow all the articles listed back to the journal being referenced.
  - dood 12y ago
    Yes, this is the source: http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1809754 http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=18097... It seems respectable and concludes: "Clinicians should be aware that meditation programs can result in small to moderate reductions of multiple negative dimensions of psychological stress. Thus, clinicians should be prepared to talk with their patients about the role that a meditation program could have in addressing psychological stress. Stronger study designs are needed to determine the effects of meditation programs in improving the positive dimensions of mental health and stress-related behavior." This directly contradicts the GP's claim that meditation is ineffective, and supports the OP's claim that meditation is a good way to deal with "psychological worries".
callum85 12y ago
How could there be a placebo for meditation? A placebo has to replicate the experience of going through the 'real' treatment being trialled. How could you create the experience of meditation without the subject actually meditating? The claim being tested is simply that the experience of meditation is beneficial, so I don't know what form a placebo could take. It would be OK to do a trial where one group is instructed to meditate and the other is not given any instructions, and you check back with each group in a couple of weeks and ask them how they feel. If there's a difference in the meditation group, that proves there is value in meditating. Placebo doesn't come into it, because no one is claiming there is any benefit to meditation that doesn't come from simply experiencing it. For comparison, I once heard of a way of testing acupuncture against a placebo – someone invented needles that look and feel the same but don't actually penetrate the skin. So they could compare the reported benefits of 'fake acupuncture' with real acupuncture, and see if there's any health benefit to the physical intervention, or if it's all just theatre. And if it is all just theatre, that's OK – it doesn't negate the health benefits of acupuncture, it just helps us understand that it's all about the experience of having someone slowly and dramatically stick pins in you, which is interesting. It's not the same as saying that acupuncture doesn't work.
- return0 12y ago
  i think you 're supposed to compare the claimed effects on people who meditate vs people who don't (control group)
  - vidarh 12y ago
    A control group that does not do anything and does not receive anything is not using a placebo. A placebo is very specifically a substitute for whatever you want to measure the effect of. You can have both a control group and a group using a placebo and get substantially different results for them, and that's exactly why placebos are used: People report substantial effects from sugar pills and the like when they believe there should be an effect.
    - return0 12y ago
vidarh 12y ago
Your source does not support your claim that research has not shown that meditation beats a placebo. Apart from pointing out that "meditation" is a wide ranging concept that includes a vast number of different, often contradictory, practices, and that a lot of the research is of poor quality (given the number of "research" papers coming out of TM affiliated sources alone - see blow -, that should not be a surprise), it relates a claim in a report from 2007 that amongst others claim "Firm conclusions on the effects of meditation practices in healthcare cannot be drawn based on the available evidence". Without looking at what was covered in the papers that report looked at, this is not enough to support your claim. The closest the article comes to dealing with the issue of placebo explicitly, is in referring to another article focusing on TM. TM is a cult-like money-grabbing business promoting one very specific form of meditation, and hardly representative of all forms of meditation practices. They're also one of the groups doing a lot of work to assist in churning out pseudo-science research papers to support their business, and as such did a lot to damage the overall quality of meditation research.
- return0 12y ago
  Conversely though, claiming the opposite is also wrong. Many people feel that meditation is good for many things, but that emotion is not science.
  - vidarh 12y ago
    It is not science, but in the context of the original "start meditating" quip on this thread, it is what matters: If it works, it solves the original problem, whether or not it works because o the placebo effect or something else.
  - r00fus 12y ago
    > "emotion is not science" However, study of emotional response can be part of the scientific process. In fact, that's the basis of the advertising industry. If I have tested meditation and found it predictably alters my moods (and similar examinations have been done for friends/family), is it fair to claim that is not science?
- 12y ago
freshfey 12y ago
Yeah again, if you only want to go after research, you might run in circles. Meditation has helped me and a lot of people I know, a lot. Whether it will work for you in your circumstances is a different question. But then: The study won't be much help, because you might have different variables in your life.
Simp 12y ago
More information to satisfy the complaints of my critics regarding the date, definitions, forms of meditation, etc: A systematic study on the efficacy of various forms of meditation programs (inc mantra, transcendental, and mindfulness meditation), commissioned by the US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, was published in 2014.[67] After a review of 17,801 citations, the study based its conclusions on 41 randomized controlled trials with an active control, involving 2,993 participants. The assessment found "no effect or insufficient evidence of any effect of meditation programs on positive mood, attention, substance use, eating habits, sleep, and weight." Study: http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1809754 http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=18097...
- dood 12y ago
  Amazingly, you have cherry-picked the part of your source that agrees with you. This is the full quote, including the bits you left you: "Mindfulness meditation programs had moderate evidence of improved anxiety... depression... and pain... and low evidence of improved stress/distress and mental health–related quality of life. We found low evidence of no effect or insufficient evidence of any effect of meditation programs on positive mood, attention, substance use, eating habits, sleep, and weight." The same source goes on to conclude, "Clinicians should be aware that meditation programs can result in small to moderate reductions of multiple negative dimensions of psychological stress"
  - Simp 12y ago
    In other words, the same reductions as a placebo would give.
- stolio 12y ago
  You should be aware that the "CSM Mantra" (?) and "TM" meditation are very fringe forms. When most people say "start meditating" they're generally not referring to those. I personally consider TM to be neutral-to-harmful and I've never heard of this CSM Mantra until just now. Mindfulness meditation, which is the only form tied to the 2,500 years of Buddhist meditation tradition, did ok. Interesting is the graph of the results where you see the mindfulness meditation fared better than the "mantra" meditations pretty much across the board (even though most of it wasn't statistically significant.)

by Simp 12y ago

stinos 12y ago

Research has not shown that meditation beats a placebo Isn't that sort of irrelevant here? I think the OP's point is that it helps, not that it helps better than something else (wahtever that may be, even a placebo)?

return0 12y ago
If it doesn't help more than a placebo, then it doesn't help at all.
- stinos 12y ago
  Wordplay? If it helps just as much (which technically is also 'not more'), it could still help since a placebo might help. Hell, even if it would help 'less' than a placebo it might still be helping since I didn't quantify exactly how much :P
  - return0 12y ago
    By that logic meditation also harms T levels. Not more than a placebo, but still harms them. Zero can be a positive or negative number.
- vidarh 12y ago
  A placebo often helps substantially. That is why we tend to test with a placebo rather than nothing at all, in order to measure the effect of what we want to test rather than the ability of our mind to influence our body. And the effect is not merely psychological. Often placebo produces measurable responses.
  - return0 12y ago
    Still though, the idea behind placebos is that they 're the most convenient thing to do compared to the alternative. It doesn't justify the suggestion to "meditate to increase T" more than "take a sugar pill to increase T"
    - vidarh 12y ago
      The idea of placebos is to attempt to introduce a "noise floor" of sorts that lets you get an idea for how much of the measured effect is actually caused by what is being measured. Generally you want a placebo that makes the test subject unable to tell which is the placebo. That will not be the case with just handing people a sugar pill and being honest about what it is. To have an effect of a sugar pill in such a setting you would have to tell people there is a chance the pill is some form of medication intended to produce similar effects. The problem with that is that if the effects of meditation are just placebo, what you end up measuring is the strength of peoples beliefs about the efficacy of meditation vs. the efficacy of drugs - you're not comparing like with like, and can't rule out additive effects of combining the two (whether or not they're both caused by the placebo effect) either. And even if it is all placebo, that does not mean it may not be justified to suggest to meditate. In fact, it is a long standing debate of medical ethics whether - and if so when - it might sometimes be justified to utilize placebos as medical treatment, because it can often have real, measurable physical effects on peoples health. The issue with that is that you'd be lying to a patient, and it might undermine peoples trust in the medical profession. That is not an issue with an off the cuff suggestion to people to meditate from someone not claiming to be a doctor. Also, I haven't seen anyone here suggest meditating to increase T, but giving an off the cuff remark suggesting meditating to address "psychological worries" people might have 10-20% of the time. Serious psychological issues needs professional treatment, but I took his comment, given the context, the term "worries", and the implication they'd only be there 10-20% of the time to mean general stress and light performance anxieties, in which case meditation either works for you or it doesn't. If it does, it does not matter if it works because of the placebo effect or not. If it doesn't, then no harm done and you can consider TRT. The point of his comment seemed to be that most people do not need TRT, but fall in the normal range and should consider other factors first. I'm saying that as someone who will seriously consider TRT when I'm older (I'm turning 40 this year)

collyw 12y ago

Placebo is an effective harm free way of improving many conditions. Why dismiss it so readily?

mackwic 12y ago
The question is not if Placebo is an efficient method. We know for sure that it is. The question is if training and practicing meditation is better than doing nothing. If you don't beat the placebo, it could mean that there's nothing to train and practice.
- vidarh 12y ago
  It is meaningless to speculate on this without a concrete paper doing a concrete comparison of a specific concrete form of meditation vs. a concrete form of placebo, and without knowing whether or not the placebo was compared to a control group doing nothing. You're right, it could mean there's nothing to train and practice. It also could mean there'd be a substantial placebo effect and a big gap from "doing nothing" to either the placebo or meditation, in which case, even if meditation were to turn out to be 100% placebo effect it would still be worthwhile to train and practice unless said researchers were to come up with a placebo that works just as well with less time spent. What I know is that meditation has substantial subjective benefits for me. I don't care if that's 100% placebo effect and/or if I'm just tricking myself in other ways. Because you know what? It doesn't matter. Meditation makes me feel relaxed. It makes me feel as if I get insights into my mind and thought processes. It makes me feel like I have more energy. It make me feel more in control and in touch of my emotions and the world in general. No matter the actual biochemical and psychological reasons for those feelings, they're still just as worthwhile outcomes to me. That's easy to lose sight of. Beating a placebo is an important measure when looking at drugs, because they pretty much all have potential risks and downsides (including the downside of cost). Showing provable effects is also important if considering prescribing meditation practice for psychological disorders, for example, because it could mean avoiding other treatment. It is also worthwhile in order to learn more about the processes involved, and see what effects can be proven. But it is largely uninteresting when considering casual meditation for someone who expects only subjective effects on mental state. In that case, what matters is mainly whether the perceived effects are sufficiently positive for someone to find it worthwhile to continue. If it's all a trick of the mind, then fine. It still feels great.

dood 12y ago

That meditation research has historically been inconclusive and of poor quality does not mean it doesn't do anything. Also, meditation research has come a long way since the studies cited in your source. Something I dug up quickly: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/americanbuddhist/2014/01/the-effectiveness-of-meditation-a-meta-analysis.html http://www.patheos.com/blogs/americanbuddhist/2014/01/the-ef...

failed_ideas 12y ago
Follow all the articles listed back to the journal being referenced.
- dood 12y ago
  Yes, this is the source: http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1809754 http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=18097... It seems respectable and concludes: "Clinicians should be aware that meditation programs can result in small to moderate reductions of multiple negative dimensions of psychological stress. Thus, clinicians should be prepared to talk with their patients about the role that a meditation program could have in addressing psychological stress. Stronger study designs are needed to determine the effects of meditation programs in improving the positive dimensions of mental health and stress-related behavior." This directly contradicts the GP's claim that meditation is ineffective, and supports the OP's claim that meditation is a good way to deal with "psychological worries".

callum85 12y ago

How could there be a placebo for meditation? A placebo has to replicate the experience of going through the 'real' treatment being trialled. How could you create the experience of meditation without the subject actually meditating? The claim being tested is simply that the experience of meditation is beneficial, so I don't know what form a placebo could take. It would be OK to do a trial where one group is instructed to meditate and the other is not given any instructions, and you check back with each group in a couple of weeks and ask them how they feel. If there's a difference in the meditation group, that proves there is value in meditating. Placebo doesn't come into it, because no one is claiming there is any benefit to meditation that doesn't come from simply experiencing it. For comparison, I once heard of a way of testing acupuncture against a placebo – someone invented needles that look and feel the same but don't actually penetrate the skin. So they could compare the reported benefits of 'fake acupuncture' with real acupuncture, and see if there's any health benefit to the physical intervention, or if it's all just theatre. And if it is all just theatre, that's OK – it doesn't negate the health benefits of acupuncture, it just helps us understand that it's all about the experience of having someone slowly and dramatically stick pins in you, which is interesting. It's not the same as saying that acupuncture doesn't work.

return0 12y ago
i think you 're supposed to compare the claimed effects on people who meditate vs people who don't (control group)
- vidarh 12y ago
  A control group that does not do anything and does not receive anything is not using a placebo. A placebo is very specifically a substitute for whatever you want to measure the effect of. You can have both a control group and a group using a placebo and get substantially different results for them, and that's exactly why placebos are used: People report substantial effects from sugar pills and the like when they believe there should be an effect.
  - return0 12y ago

vidarh 12y ago

Your source does not support your claim that research has not shown that meditation beats a placebo. Apart from pointing out that "meditation" is a wide ranging concept that includes a vast number of different, often contradictory, practices, and that a lot of the research is of poor quality (given the number of "research" papers coming out of TM affiliated sources alone - see blow -, that should not be a surprise), it relates a claim in a report from 2007 that amongst others claim "Firm conclusions on the effects of meditation practices in healthcare cannot be drawn based on the available evidence". Without looking at what was covered in the papers that report looked at, this is not enough to support your claim. The closest the article comes to dealing with the issue of placebo explicitly, is in referring to another article focusing on TM. TM is a cult-like money-grabbing business promoting one very specific form of meditation, and hardly representative of all forms of meditation practices. They're also one of the groups doing a lot of work to assist in churning out pseudo-science research papers to support their business, and as such did a lot to damage the overall quality of meditation research.

return0 12y ago
Conversely though, claiming the opposite is also wrong. Many people feel that meditation is good for many things, but that emotion is not science.
- vidarh 12y ago
  It is not science, but in the context of the original "start meditating" quip on this thread, it is what matters: If it works, it solves the original problem, whether or not it works because o the placebo effect or something else.
- r00fus 12y ago
  > "emotion is not science" However, study of emotional response can be part of the scientific process. In fact, that's the basis of the advertising industry. If I have tested meditation and found it predictably alters my moods (and similar examinations have been done for friends/family), is it fair to claim that is not science?
12y ago

freshfey 12y ago

Yeah again, if you only want to go after research, you might run in circles. Meditation has helped me and a lot of people I know, a lot. Whether it will work for you in your circumstances is a different question. But then: The study won't be much help, because you might have different variables in your life.

Simp 12y ago

More information to satisfy the complaints of my critics regarding the date, definitions, forms of meditation, etc: A systematic study on the efficacy of various forms of meditation programs (inc mantra, transcendental, and mindfulness meditation), commissioned by the US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, was published in 2014.[67] After a review of 17,801 citations, the study based its conclusions on 41 randomized controlled trials with an active control, involving 2,993 participants. The assessment found "no effect or insufficient evidence of any effect of meditation programs on positive mood, attention, substance use, eating habits, sleep, and weight." Study: http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1809754 http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=18097...

dood 12y ago
Amazingly, you have cherry-picked the part of your source that agrees with you. This is the full quote, including the bits you left you: "Mindfulness meditation programs had moderate evidence of improved anxiety... depression... and pain... and low evidence of improved stress/distress and mental health–related quality of life. We found low evidence of no effect or insufficient evidence of any effect of meditation programs on positive mood, attention, substance use, eating habits, sleep, and weight." The same source goes on to conclude, "Clinicians should be aware that meditation programs can result in small to moderate reductions of multiple negative dimensions of psychological stress"
- Simp 12y ago
  In other words, the same reductions as a placebo would give.
stolio 12y ago
You should be aware that the "CSM Mantra" (?) and "TM" meditation are very fringe forms. When most people say "start meditating" they're generally not referring to those. I personally consider TM to be neutral-to-harmful and I've never heard of this CSM Mantra until just now. Mindfulness meditation, which is the only form tied to the 2,500 years of Buddhist meditation tradition, did ok. Interesting is the graph of the results where you see the mindfulness meditation fared better than the "mantra" meditations pretty much across the board (even though most of it wasn't statistically significant.)