
New study claims Transcendental Meditation 'cuts risk of heart attack by half' - blazamos
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6581495/Meditation-cuts-risk-of-heart-attack-by-half.html
======
rms
If you're considering a type of meditation, I suspect the consensus of Hacker
News meditators is for Vipassana meditation.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=587032> The book is free.
<http://mail.saigon.com/~anson/ebud/mfneng/mind0.htm>

~~~
richcollins
Why would you suspect that Hacker News readers would be most interested in a
meditation technique that is heavily grounded in metaphysics?

~~~
rms
Because it can be done as a technique while ignoring all of the voodoo-mumbo-
jumbo. The book linked doesn't discuss the metaphysics. Just watch your
breath, then be aware of all of the sensations in your body. Personally I find
the metaphysics rather cute.

For empirical evidence, I linked to a popular thread where few people had
negative things to say about Vipassana. Of the people that suggested
alternative meditation styles, one was modded to 3 points and one was at 1
points.

------
blazamos
Saw a link to the article on Dan Benjamin's Hivelogic and was wondering what
you guys think.

The allegedly biased Wikipedia-cited scientific research:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendental_Meditation#Scien...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendental_Meditation#Scientific_research)

The article from Skeptic's Dictionary:

<http://skepdic.com/tm.html>

MetaFilter thread on whether or not it's worth the $2500:

[http://ask.metafilter.com/22579/Is-it-worth-2500-to-learn-
Tr...](http://ask.metafilter.com/22579/Is-it-worth-2500-to-learn-
Transcendental-Meditation)

~~~
GiraffeNecktie
The WP article is a completely whitewashed history of the organization,
clearly edited by TM people. The organization has a loooooooong history of
making dubious claims based mostly on research performed by its own people.
<http://www.aaskolnick.com/naswmav.htm> Even when their research has been
refuted by numerous other studies, they'll continue to quote it, as if it were
still valid. What's worse is that they've gone to great pains to hide the
serious side effects of TM. <http://www.suggestibility.org/>

------
nandemo
_Over nine years, 201 African American people with an average age of 59 and
who had all been diagnosed with heart disease were randomly assigned to either
Transcendental Meditation or health education classes about diet and
exercise._

Where's the control group? Classes about diet and exercise can be rather
stressful to overweight people...

~~~
trapper
Where's your research to prove your assertion? The consensus in the field is
that health education classes about diet and exercise have positive benefits,
which is backed up in the literature.

So, this study really compared against _best practice_. I don't see the
problem. Comparing a new treatment against best practice is ethical when you
are dealing with people's lives.

------
tokenadult
"Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation"

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

~~~
foldr
What?

Are you suggesting that the researchers made one of these errors?

