Examining the studies in the review ”Does Meditation Have a Specific Effect? A Systematic Experimental Evaluation of a Mental silence Orientated Definition”, 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 [...]
Control methods in meditation trials can be positioned on a spectrum based on their varying ability to elicit non-specific effects. At the low face validity end are those that are mostly passive and implausible (such as “waiting list”) and therefore unlikely to control for non-specific factors, while at the other extreme are those that are [...]
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 to [...]
The design of RCTs ( randomized controlled trials) 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 [...]
Many considerations bring us back to the most important issue in the ongoing effort to reconcile the differing polemics from science, ancient tradition and pop culture. Which is not the question about whether meditation has any effect, because it clearly does have, but whether or not meditation has any specific effect.
Clearly the RCT (randomized controlled trials) evidence [...]