Research studies on the Transcendental Meditation technique have been conducted by more than 360 scientists in 33 countries — at over 250 medical schools and universities. The majority of the studies were conducted by scientists unaffiliated with the TM teaching organization or Maharishi University of Management (www.mum.edu). Those studies in which MUM faculty did participate were almost always collaborations with independent scientists from other universities.“An area of scientific research that’s here to stay”
by Dr. Sidney Weinstein, Editor-in-Chief, International Journal of Neuroscience
“Over the past 10 years the editors and reviewers of IJN have accepted several papers on Transcendental Meditation because they have met the rigorous standards of scientific publication. IJN is honored to have two Nobel laureates on its editorial board, and has a distinguished group of scientists from leading universities on every continent who judge the scientific value of the papers submitted for consideration. Not once have these scientists ever questioned the integrity or scientific validity of the papers on Transcendental Meditation. The fact that the articles on Transcendental Meditation continue to appear in large numbers in reputable journals in addition to IJN demonstrates, at least to me, that this is an area of scientific research that’s here to stay. Any review of Transcendental Meditation literature that overlooks these publications smacks of scientific censorship. Perhaps such reviewers would find it instructive to read about the Galileo affair."
Note: Dr. Weinstein does not practice the Transcendental Meditation program.
The peer-review process
Even though most of the several hundred peer-reviewed studies on the TM technique did not involve MUM faculty or scientists associated with the TM organization, a small handful of critics on the Internet charge that research studies involving scientists from MUM are necessarily weak or invalid due to an alleged lack of objectivity. Yet scientists and peer-reviewers from the research community at large generally do not charge that MUM-affiliated studies (or research on the TM program in general) are lacking in rigor. Typically, accusations of “biased research” are made by non-scientists and remain unsupported by empirical evidence.
The peer-review process strives to filter out weak research or studies that may have been biased by the orientation of the scientists. While this process is far from flawless, it involves layers of independent, professional scientific reviewers, editors and publishers who filter out the vast majority of weak experimental designs and analyses before accepting papers for publication. It is certainly possible that less-than-topnotch studies in any field of research can slip through the peer-review process. But the fact that hundreds of studies on the Transcendental Meditation technique have met the high standards of peer-review — and that scientific journals continue publishing new research on the TM technique year after year — speaks for the professionalism and integrity of the body of research supportive of the TM technique.
Bias in scientific research
It may be true that one should be suspicious of studies funded by big pharma about their drug products, but it is a fallacy that scientists who care about a topic they are studying are necessarily biased. For example, the researcher Ian Mitroff studied 40 scientists involved in Apollo lunar missions. The study suggested that attachment to one's ideas is not necessarily a liability in the scientific arena. The scientists Mitroff surveyed considered the notion of an emotionally uninvolved, objective scientist to be naive and also not an ideal worth emulating. The most successful and respected scientists, the study found, were actually those most committed to the theory being investigated.
Unlike pharmaceutical companies, the TM organization does not pay for research on the TM technique. Scientists researching the TM program, meditating and not meditating, get their own funding because they are dedicated to people's well-being and see the TM program as a promising field of research. It seems "biased" to automatically conclude that just because a meditating research scientist has participated a particular study on meditation, that the study is necessarily biased and therefore to be doubted.
Universities & Research Institutes Conducting
NIH-funded Research on Transcendental Meditation:
University of
Pennsylvania
Effectiveness
of Transcendental Meditation on Functional Capacity and Quality of Life of
African Americans with Congestive Heart Failure.
Published in Ethnicity and Disease, Winter 2007 Full
Article
Cedars-Sinai Hospital,
Los Angeles
The effects
of Transcendental Meditation on cardiovascular disease in coronary heart
disease patients with metabolic syndrome.
Published in
the American Medical Association’s Archives
of Internal Medicine, July 2006 Full Article
University of
California, Irvine
The effects
of Transcendental Meditation on brain functioning, stress, and pain as shown by
magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
Published in NeuroReport, August 2006 Full
Article
University of Iowa
The effects
of the multimodality approach of the TM technique and Ayurvedic herbal
preparations on coronary disease.
Published in Journal of Preventive Cardiology, August
2014 Full
Article
St Joseph Hospital,
Chicago
A randomized
controlled trial of the effects of Transcendental Meditation on quality of life
in older breast cancer patients.
Published in Integrative
Cancer Therapies, 2009 Full
Article
Funded by grant
from the NIH National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine
The Medical College of
Wisconsin, Milwaukee
(1) A study
on the effects of Transcendental Meditation on the prevention of hypertension
in African Americans; and
(2) A study
on the effects of Transcendental Meditation on morbidity and mortality in
African Americans with heart disease.
Published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and
Outcomes Nov 2012 Full Article
Charles R. Drew
University of Medicine and Science, Los Angeles
(1) A study
on the mechanisms of atherosclerosis—the effects of Transcendental Meditation
on the sympathetic nervous system and the functioning of the arterial
endothelium in African Americans; and
(2) The
effects of Transcendental Meditation on carotid atherosclerosis.
Published in
the American Heart Association’s Stroke,
March 2000 Full Article
The Medical College of Georgia, Augusta GA
(1) Impact of Transcendental Meditation on ambulatory blood pressure in African-American adolescents at risk for development of hypertension.
Published in American Journal of Hypertension, April
2004 Full Article
(2) Impact of Transcendental Meditation® on cardiovascular function at rest and during acute stress in adolescents with high normal blood pressure.
Published in Journal of Psychosomatic Research October, 2001 Full Article
(3) Impact of Transcendental Meditation on negative school behavior in African Americans adolescents at risk for development of hypertension.
Published in Health
and Quality of Life Outcome, 2003 Full Article
(4) Impact of Transcendental Meditation on
left ventricular mass in African American adolescents.
Published in Evidence-Based
Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 2012 Full Article
(5) Acute effects of Transcendental Meditation1 on
hemodynamic functioning in middle-aged adults
Published in Psychosomatic Medicine, July-August 1999
Full
Article
West Oakland Health Center, Oakland California
A randomized controlled trial of
stress reduction for hypertension in older African Americans.
Published in Hypertension, Nov 1995 Full Article
A trial of stress reduction for
hypertension in older African Americans (Part II): Sex and risk factor subgroup
analysis.
Published in Hypertension, August 1996 Full Article
A randomized controlled trial of
stress reduction in the treatment of hypertension in African Americans during
one year.
Published in American Journal of Hypertension, Jan 2005 Full Article
Maharishi University of Management, Fairfield
Iowa; the West Oakland Health Center, Oakland California; University of Iowa
College of Medicine, Iowa City, Iowa; Medical College of Georgia, Augusta,
Georgia
A randomized
controlled trial of stress reduction on cardiovascular and all-cause mortality
in the elderly: Results of 8 and 15 year follow-ups.
Published in Circulation Feb 1996 Abstract
Long-term
effects of stress reduction on mortality in persons ≥ 55 years of age with
systemic hypertension.
Published in American Journal of Cardiology, July 2005
Full
Article
Maharishi University of
Management, Fairfield Iowa
A controlled
study of the effects of the Transcendental Meditation Program on cardiovascular
reactivity and ambulatory blood pressure.
Published in International Journal of Neuroscience,
1997 Abstract
Anger
expression correlates with platelet aggregation.
Published in Behavioral Medicine, 1997 Abstract
