n 1991 the National Research Council (NRC)

issued an evaluation of some of the therapies

examined herein (Druckman and Bjork, 1991). The NRC in 1988 also reviewed certain human-performance technologies designed to enhance human abilities beyond normal levels, which are also the concern of the Panel on MindBody Interventions (Druckman and Swets, 1988). Because the conclusions of the NRC reports differ from our own, and because these reports have been influential in shaping public opinion about the effectiveness and benefits of certain mindbody interventions, we believe it is important to comment on these discrepancies.

We shall focus on the NRC's treatment of meditation, one of the approaches we have closely examined, and parapsychology, an indirectly related area, to illustrate these differences of opinion and describe how they have taken shape.

Meditation

The 1991 NRC report stated, "Overall, our assessment of the scientific research on meditation (primarily, transcendental meditation [TM]) leads to the conclusion that it seems to be no more effective in lowering metabolism than are established relaxation techniques; it is unwarranted to attribute any special effects to meditation alone" (Druckman and Bjork, 1991). The NRC report reached this conclusion by drawing primarily on two previous narrative reviews. One of these, by Holmes, covered less than half the relevant studies on TM available at the time it was prepared (Holmes, 1984). The other, by Brener and Connally (1986), also appears to have ignored much of the available and relevant research.

A meta-analysis by TM researchers Dillbeck and Orme-Johnson on the effects of meditation, published in American Psychologist, came to a

different conclusion but was ignored in the NRC report. Their quantitative approach showed that the effect size for TM was more than twice that of resting quietly on basal skin resistance, respiration rate, and plasma lactate (Dillbeck and Orme-Johnson, 1987).

Furthermore, Eppley, Abrams, and Shear, addressing psychological and physiological measures of anxiety, showed that TM typically produces two to three times the reductions in effects of chronic stress compared with other meditation and relaxation techniques (Eppley et al., 1989). Yet the NRC report said "no evidence supports the notion that ... meditation permits a person to better cope with a stressor."

Meta-analysis allows quantitative analysis of various aspects of the literature. For instance, it allows one to compare the results of studies done by experimenters who are cordial, neutral, and negative toward TM. The Eppley meta-analysis demonstrated that the distribution of effects was normal, indicating that the positive conclusions reached in studies of TM are not the result of selective reporting, and that the NRC's characterization of researchers who are practitioners of meditation as subjectively biased "devotees" is without merit. The Eppley meta-analysis also contradicted the Brener and Connally claim that meditation research suffered from "weak design" by providing quantitative demonstration that the results cannot be accounted for by subject selection, experimenter bias, expectancies, or atmospheric effects.

The NRC report embodies some faulty assumptions about meditation. It expresses the expectation that meditation should "[lower] reactivity to challenge"-that is, to make one less responsive to stressors, perhaps through "distracting a person" or providing a "quiet place." But this is neither the traditional nor the express

purpose of TM, which is to achieve "restful alertness, a state of unifying capacity." These misunderstandings may be due to the fact, acknowledged by the NRC, that no one on their committee was personally familiar with the experience of any of the meditation practices they reviewed. The difficulties this created were also acknowledged by the committee: "It seems appropriate to be mindful of the constraints that science, as well as culture, background, and personal life experience, place on how the committee views the field of meditation."1

The most glaring omission in the NRC report is a large database (more than 40 published reports) of societal impact studies on what the TM researchers call the consciousness field. The theory underlying this research is that the field, when supported by a sufficient number of meditators, produces the effects and benefits of meditation in the larger population. This is a nonlocal effect, a type of action-at-a-distance, and the TM researchers describe a correspondence to aspects of quantum nonlocality in their efforts to explain

the results of these studies.

On the positive side, the NRC report makes a number of very sensible recommendations for research. In a general observation, they state that "learning to relax and enjoy good feelings may prompt a person to make positive changes in his or her work and personal situation. . . . [I]t may be that meditation and relaxation... effect cognitive change."2 Their overall conclusion restates a question about relative efficacy and constitutes an implicit recommendation for more incisive research, but they do not dispute the potential therapeutic effects of meditation broadly defined.

Parapsychology

In its 1988 report the NRC is strongly critical of parapsychology, a field that studies, from an independent perspective, the nonlocal events exemplified in prayer and mental-spiritual healing that we have reviewed earlier. The NRC emphasized their belief that more than 130 years of research have failed to find any evidence of

parapsychological phenomena. Because of the relevance of this research to issues addressed by the Panel on Mind-Body Interventions, the literature was examined, revealing impressive evidence in clear disagreement with the NRC's conclusion.

In the December 1989 issue of Foundations of Physics, Radin and Nelson reported the largest meta-analysis of parapsychological findings ever done—a total of 832 studies from 68 investigators, involving the influence of human consciousness on microelectronic systems (Radin and Nelson, 1989). The results: "Radin and Nelson's meta-analysis demonstrates that the... results are robust and repeatable. Unless critics want to allege wholesale collusion among more than 60 experimenters or suggest a methodological artifact common to... hundred[s of] experiments conducted over nearly three decades, there is no escaping the conclusion that [these] effects are indeed possible" (Broughton, 1991; Jahn and Dunne, 1987).

Meta-analysis has also been applied to research studies in precognition, which typically involve card-guessing by a subject before the targets are even prepared. Honorton and Ferrari found 309 studies in English-language publications by 62 investigators, involving more than 50,000 subjects who participated in nearly 2 million trials. Their findings were as follows:

• Thirty percent of the studies produced statistically significant results (where 5 percent was expected by chance). The odds of this result happening by chance are approximately 1 in 1,024.

• The results could not be explained by the failure of researchers to report negative studies (the "file drawer" effect).

⚫ Studies with the most rigorous methodology tended to produce better results (exactly the opposite of critics' claims).

The effect size remained constant over the more than 50 years under consideration (Honorton and Ferrari, 1989).

An excellent summary of the techniques of meta-analysis applied to several parapsychological databases was published in 1991 by Jessica Utts in Statistical Science (Utts, 1991).

A charge frequently made about parapsychology and the nonlocal therapies we have examined is that the quality of research in these areas is low or substandard. In its 1988 report, the NRC commissioned psychologist Robert Rosenthal of Harvard University to prepare an evaluation of all the controversial areas of interest to the NRC committee. Parapsychology researcher Richard S. Broughton describes this undertaking:

Rosenthal is widely regarded as one of the world's
experts in evaluating controversial research claims.
in the social sciences and has spent much of his
career developing techniques to provide objective
assessments of conflicting data. Neither Rosenthal
nor his coauthor, Monica Harris, had taken any
public position on parapsychology.... The report
by Harris and Rosenthal determined that the "re-
search quality" of the parapsychology research
was the best of all the areas under scrutiny. . . .
Incredibly... [the] committee chairman... asked
Rosenthal to withdraw the parapsychology section
of his report. Rosenthal refused. In the final docu-
ment, the Harris and Rosenthal report is cited only
in the several sections dealing with nonparapsy-
chological topics; there is no mention of it in the
parapsychology section (Broughton, 1991).

...

The Panel on Mind-Body Interventions believes it is necessary to acknowledge and document our differences of opinion with the NRC reports. At the same time, we do not wish to overemphasize or dwell on these conflicting points of view.

If the field of alternative medicine is to progress, it is vital that any evaluation of mind-body practices be comprehensive, rigorous, and unbiased.

References

Brener, J., and S.R. Connally. 1986. Meditation: Rationales, Experimental Effects, and Methodological Issues. Paper prepared for the U. S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, European Division, Departrent of Psychology, University of Hull, London. Broughton, R.S. 1991. Parapsychology: The Controversial Science. Ballantine Books, New York, p. 291.

Dillbeck, M.C., and D.W. Orme-Johnson 1987. Physiological differences between transcendental meditation and rest. American Psychologist 42:879-881.

Druckman, D., and R.A. Bjork, eds. 1991. In the Mind's Eye: Enhancing Human Performance. National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.

Druckman, D., and J.A. Swets, eds. 1988. Enhancing Human Performance: Issues, Theories, and Techniques. National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.

Eppley, K.R., A.I. Abrams, and J. Shear. 1989. Differential effects of relaxation technique on trait anxiety: a metaanalysis. J. Clin. Psychol. 45:957-974.

Holmes, D.S. 1984. Mediation and somatic arousal reduction: A review of the experimental evidence. American Psychologist 39:1-10.

Honorton, C., and D.C. Ferrari. 1989. Future telling: a meta-analysis of forced-choice precognition experiments, 1935-1987. J. Parapsychol. 53:281-308.

Jahn, R.G., and B.J. Dunne. 1987. Precognitive Remote Perception. In Margins of Reality: The Role of Consciousness in the Physical World. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, pp. 149-191.

Orme-Johnson, D.W., and C.N. Alexander. 1992. Critique of the National Research Council's report on meditation. Manuscript available from the first author. Maharishi International University, Fairfield, Iowa.

Radin, D.L., and R.D. Nelson. 1989. Consciousnessrelated effects in random physical systems. Foundations of Physics 19:1499-1514.

Utts, J. 1991. Replication and meta-analysis in parapsychology. Statistical Science 4:363-403.