It seems obvious that the non-specific effect of any intervention is closely related to its credibility and plausibility as a therapeutic intervention i.e. its “face validity”. Now, some of the effects associated with meditation must be non-specific, i.e. comprising a mixture of placebo, therapeutic contact, spontaneous improvement, and so on, whereas some, hopefully, are specific [...]
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It may not be practically possible to devise and implement an ideal control method for meditation trials, nevertheless it is important to select a strategy that approximates that ideal. The bare minimum criteria for a control process in meditation research should therefore be:
• First, high face validity as a therapeutic/stress management intervention in its own [...]
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Examining randomised controlled trials exploring meditation in my review, control methods were presumptively categorized according to their face-validity into low, moderate or high face validity categories.
The low face-validity controls used strategies that were:
• Passive and unstructured: Participants were involved in minimal or no activity relating to the trial and had no interaction with researchers [...]
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The design of RCTs for meditation (or any behaviour-based therapy for that matter) involves a number of unique challenges compared with pharmacological trials. While both categories of trial use an inactive placebo, the pharmaceutical trial uses an inert “sugar tablet” which appears similar to the medication being administered. The participant taking the “sugar tablet” is [...]
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Sham meditation involves designing control strategies that overtly resemble the intervention, but which do not actually trigger the effects purported to be specifically associated with meditation.
Sham techniques are used in research when the researcher wishes to examine the specific effects a meditation technique may elicit, while controlling for the non-specific effects.
Sham meditation procedures necessarily involve [...]
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Posted in meditation, mental silence on Jul 26th, 2009
Dr Ramesh Manocha explains why strong controls are necessary when researching the real-world relevance of meditation in this excerpt from his thesis:
“Some might argue that controlling for non-specific effects is an academic exercise with little real-world relevance. This is supposedly because factors such as the placebo effect, expectancy of relief and demand characteristics are a [...]
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