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Slight quibbles re coverage of Hatchard UK study

Hatchard, et al., used a time series analysis to show that beginning in March, 1988, when the number practicing the TM-Sidhi program in a group (the Maharishi Effect Threshold), combined with the number of people trained in TM (the Maharishi Effect Threshold Index), reached the designated threshold percentage, the crime rate fell significantly. That trend continued all the way to 1992: when the researchers analyzed the percentage of crime rate changes for the years 1987/90 and 1987/92, they found that of all the 42 police districts of England and Wales, Merseyside was the only one where the crime rate decreased, whereas it rose everywhere else. Hatchard dismissed other possible causes for the crime reduction, including an expansion in a drug treatment program mentioned below that he says began in July whereas the crime reduction began earlier in March, coinciding with the gathering of a group practicing the TM-sidhi program.

I think some of this needs slight changes in wording to be brought in line with the source. Since so far what I've put in the article has been summarily reverted, I'm choosing to put this out for discussion rather than making the changes myself. First, "beginning in March, 1988...the crime rate fell significantly." This is not actually true; the fall in the crime rate began sometime in 1987 and continued through 1989, and the paper doesn't actually claim in so many words that the fall began in March 1988. The phrasing from the article abstract: "A phase transition occurred during March 1988 with a 13.4% drop in crime..." might seem to suggest that this "phase transition" signaled the beginning of the drop, but this drop was part of an already falling cycle; it didn't mark the beginning of the cycle. So I'd suggest a slight change in wording to bring that in line with the source.

"that trend continued all the way to 1992" again not true; the trend continued only through 1987,1988 and 1989; the crime rate in Merseyside started going up again in 1990 and continued going up through 1992. (Percentage increases: .6% in 1990, 7% in 1991 and 6% in 1992). Here again, the paper doesn't actually say that in so many words; what it says is up until 1992, Merseyside crime rate has remained steady in contrast to the national crime rate which has increased by 45%. Well, yes and no. Compared to the national crime rate, which indeed was close enough to 45% Merseyside was relatively stable. But the direct statement in the article that the downward trend in the crime rate continued "all the way to 1992" is neither factually accurate nor quite true to the source, and I think maybe that should be reworded. Woonpton (talk) 22:07, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Those seem like legitimate issues. Can you suggest suitable text to address them?   Will Beback  talk  22:38, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Woonpton, good points. I agree that it needs tweaking to be closer to what the study says. TimidGuy (talk) 12:37, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I was hoping someone who thinks that paper means anything useful, maybe the person who added the incorrect statements in the first place, would be willing to fix it. If no one else will, I'll give it a shot, but I'm not very good at paraphrasing nonsense.

In the meantime, I've been working on the rest of that paragraph, trying to find a source for when the drug program was implemented, because I have a quibble about that sentence too: Hatchard dismissed other possible causes for the crime reduction, including an expansion in a drug treatment program mentioned below that he says began in July whereas the crime reduction began earlier in March Actually, what Hatchard said was "...expansion of the numbers being treated at the Liverpool Drug Dependency Clinic did not take place until July 1988, too late to account for the March 1988 fall in crime." He doesn't cite this statement to a source, doesn't provide any data. It doesn't serve as a very adequate refutation of the drug treatment program as a cause for the crime reduction as it stands, and to my eye it looks lame and defensive being used for that purpose.

The drug treatment program that was launched in Merseyside in the mid-80s has been described as "an enormous mobilization of multi-agency resources involving GPs, probation officers, health and outreach workers, voluntary street agencies, CDTs, and drug clinics" and since even at the peak of the mobilization the Liverpool Drug Dependency Clinic was only serving a quarter of the thousands of drug users who had been "captured" into the program, it's unlikely that the numbers being served at the Liverpool Clinic before and after March 1988, even if we knew what they were, could serve as an adequate estimate of the numbers being served by the entire program at the time. And of course a vague, unsourced comment that the numbers started increasing at that clinic starting in July, without data to back it up, can't be taken as anything more than someone's off-the-cuff remark, and shouldn't be treated as if it were actual data.

I've searched the internet and cannot find anything more definite on when the program was implemented than "mid 80s" or "mid to late 1980s." I suspect that because it was so huge and involved so many different agencies and so much inter-agency coordination, it was probably phased in over time and didn't proceed at the same pace in the different townships of Merseyside. But the pont is, it obviously involved much more than the Liverpool drug clinic, a statement that is added to discredit the drug program-crime reduction explanation with only a vague mention of numbers at one clinic not increasing til July seems like an attempt to misdirect attention rather than a fair consideration of the alternate explanation, especially when all he had to do was look at the data and see that the drug explanation was a more reasonable explanation than the meditation-consciousness explanation, especially since the crime rate started falling steadily a year before the "phase transition" occurred in the MTI%. . Even though the statement is sourced, it doesn't serve the reader well to include it as if it provided an adequate refutation of the study that provides very persuasive evidence for the crime reduction being connected to the drugs program. Woonpton (talk) 15:25, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Woonpton, you make some very good points. You may be pinpointing the weaknesses if there were any in the study. Also, I've wondered how definable the words "phase transition" are in terms of an accurate description of when results were noticed. If the ME does work I would think that possibly its extraordinary results might in actuality be a reflection of both the drug rehabilitation program and the ME which in fact the ME study doesn't take into account as you say. If you can reword the article text to reflect the study accurately that would be excellent.(olive (talk) 16:21, 17 December 2009 (UTC))

No, actually I haven't even touched on the weaknesses of the study. However, I did remove a couple of misleading statements from our article and am satisfied that the material is more neutral now, My personal opinion is that if the ME had actually added anything to the drug program, one might have seen an improvement in all crime categories, in violent crimes and in criminal vandalism as well as in drug-related crimes, but that's just my opinion. Woonpton (talk) 16:46, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, right, not the study but the wording of the paper on the study. Thanks for correcting for the accuracy in my wording. (olive (talk) 17:13, 17 December 2009 (UTC))

Woonpton, I sent your comments in this thread to Guy Hatchard. Here's his response:

"Please thank your correspondent for his interest. Firstly the statement that crime had been falling steadily for a year prior to March 1988 is incorrect. Time series analysis was conducted extensively on the data. Even one month prior to March 1988 the data was closely following the trend of previous years. Time series analysis proceeds by modelling the monthly data for years prior to the intervention and then asks the question does the post intervention data fit the prior model? If it does not, the amount of difference that that was evident in the intervention month is assessed. This came out to be 13.4% drop in crime. This is true of March 1988 but not of February 1988. So we are dealing with a 'phase transition' in the physical sense where a huge change in state occurs within a very short period of time and any explanation must fit this data pattern. I was able to communicate directly with those running the Merseyside drug rehabilitation initiative. From this it was apparent that the drug program was not expanded until later on in 1988 after the large fall in crime in March 1988. There is a need to differentiate between the efforts to reduce drug dependency in Merseyside which were shared by most other major cities in the UK (which had been going on for a significant time prior to 1988) and the special and unique efforts that began to be expanded in Merseyside after mid 1988 which later on became known as the 'harm reduction' movement. The Liverpool Drug Dependency Clinic was at the centre of this movement and was able to provide an assessment of the timing general adoption of a novel approach which began later in 1988. The Harm Reduction movement effectively decriminalised the approach to drug abuse in Merseyside and became considered to be a model approach that was widely adopted elsewhere, but this movement had not yet come together in March 1988. Therefore the drug treatment approach in Merseyside is in no way a good candidate to explain the dramatic fall in crime which occurred in the space of one month in March 1988. To suppose that the Merseyside drug program was the cause of the fall in crime in March 1988 would violate principles of causality, moreover the lack of effect in other cities with similar interagency programmes would also run counter to this explanation. My study went through a very rigorous peer review process and was closely scrutinised prior to acceptance for publication. There was also a length restriction on the final article. So several hundred pages of research had to be condensed down to the final length. So detailed consideration of alternative explanations are of necessity reported in summary rather than at length. All the very best."

In a thread above I believe you gave a link to a pdf of the Home Office study, but when I clicked on the link I got Page Not Found. Do you have a pdf of the study, such that I could get it from you? TimidGuy (talk) 12:42, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Timid for supplying this interesting response form Hatchard. --BwB (talk) 16:46, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm at a loss how Hatchard's comments add anything useful here, since my "quibbles" were about the wording of our article; that's been fixed and as far as I know there's been no objection to my changes that brought the wording more in line with the source and with NPOV. I don't find Hatchard's comments helpful, since what he says here is what I already disputed in my earlier comments, (he seems to have missed the point of my comments completely) but further debate on the matter is unlikely to be productive. We cite both studies accurately and fairly and let the studies speak for themselves; that's what we do here. Does Hatchard have an issue about the coverage of his research in the article? Whether he does, or whether he doesn't, I don't believe his opinions are relevant here; we rely on reliable sources for the information we put in the article, and I think we've done that quite well and in a way that doesn't support misinformation. I thought we were done with this two weeks ago. Woonpton (talk) 17:00, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

P.S. I just checked that link and it works fine for me; if I click on it, it immediately downloads a pdf, so maybe you need to do whatever it was you were saying I'd need to (something about right-click, as I recall) to a reference I was looking for (as it turned out, the article downloaded automatically for me without my needing to do anything). So try that. Woonpton (talk) 17:55, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I guess it was a temporary glitch, since the link now works for me. In the meantime, Will had e-mailed to to me, for which I thank him. I guess it's still an issue in my mind whether the Home Office study should be included, since it can't explain the reduction of crime that began in March. If we include the study, we need to make it clearer that it can't explain the phenomenon described in the study. Guy's comments above help explain why the drug program doesn't apply. He was there, he was directly in touch with the officials, he knew exactly the scope and timing of the introduction of the program. I forwarded the Home Office study to Guy, and here's what he said:

"I've just read this paper published by the Home Office. Unfortunately it is inadequate on statistical analysis. Please note that such Home Office papers are not 'peer reviewed' journal papers. This one deals with year to year crime data and with a few specific categories of crime. My paper looked at monthly crime data in all categories over a long period of time. The Home Office paper establishes no credible time line for the Merseyside Drug Treatment Program. This program only began to build up in earnest in the later 1980s after the Maharishi Effect threshold was passed in March 1988 and after crime had already fallen dramatically. Therefore there is no statistical justification for assigning a causal relationship between the drug treatment program and the dramatic fall in crime  in Merseyside. You can't establish a backwards causality, as the Home Office paper appears to do, without violating fundamental principles of science. This is the key point. Society comprises a very complex set of interactions. To establish scientific justification for a social thesis you must establish reasonable grounds for causality in time. The Home Office paper fails to address this issue because time series analysis was not used in the analysis of crime and treatment data. Although there are reasonable grounds to put forward a hypothesis that drug treatment programs have a beneficial effect on crime which are covered in detail in the article, the actual size and timing of any effect can only be established using time series analysis. In this case, I found that the data in Merseyside does not support such a hypothesis. The Home Office study offers no advance on this finding so the hypothesis must be rejected."

So why is this study relevant, since it can't explain the phenomenon? If we include it, how can we make it more clear that it doesn't explain what was observed and that it's much narrower than the Hatchard study? TimidGuy (talk) 11:50, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Very interesting. I am enjoying this discussion! --BwB (talk) 11:56, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

If there are published critiques of the Home Office paper we can include those too. Hatchard's belief that his explanation is better than theirs is not a sufficient reason to delete it. We're not in a position to judge which study is correct, so we present the information to the reader and let them make their own evaluation.   Will Beback  talk  19:13, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

No. We can judge that the HO study does not cover the same period as the ME study. If it does not, then we are not comparing apples to apples. We can then decide whether to include the HO study. (But indications would be that we would not.) --BwB (talk) 20:44, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

What indications are you referring to? The HO study seem to encompass crime rates between 1979 and 1994. (Looking at the HO study I see it says that the crime rate for St. Helens, the borough of Merseyside closest to Skelmersdale, jumped in 1991, the year when Hatchard says the MTI reached its highest value in March. Hatchard may not have had that disaggregated data available.)   Will Beback  talk  21:10, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I had refrained from commenting on Hatchard's initial "rebuttal" copied here by TimidGuy, since neither of our opinions can be used for the purposes of the article and a back and forth between us would just clutter up the talk page without any productive result for the article. But since he has been brought back to provide commentary on the Home Office study, after I'd made the point that his opinion can't be useful to us here, I feel that his comments need to be balanced with a response:

• The Hatchard study fails what in graduate school we called the "inter-ocular test," meaning that before you do anything to a set of data, you should just look at the numbers and see if there's something that hits you between the eyes. Here there's something that is so obvious it almost knocks you down. Hatchard used total reported crime in Merseyside as his dependent variable, and suggests that his statistical analysis established that a group of TM-Sidhi practioners nearby created increased coherence in the collective consciousness that made crime go down. However, the data themselves tell a different story. What the data say is that the drop in total crime is not echoed by a drop in all crime categories; instead it's powered by a sharp drop during 1987, 1988 and 1989, in only certain kinds of crime: theft from vehicles, burglary of dwelling, that kind of thing. While total crime went down in Merseyside by 10% from 1987-1992, violence against persons went up 29% in the same period, and other non-acquisitive crimes also increased. It's kind of hard to come up with a rationale that would explain how an increase in coherence of consciousness could cause a decrease in petty theft while at the same time allowing citizens to be violently assaulted with ever greater frequency. The data speak for themselves here; it's not necessary to use inappropriately complex statistics to excavate what's going on (as a critique of another Maharishi Effect study put it, using time series for something like this "is like using a chain saw to cut a cantaloupe"), since it's right there in plain sight in the data for all to see. Citing the Home Office study in our article simply provides a reliable source to establish what the data show, that the drop in crime was only a drop in certain kinds of crime, the acquisitive crimes that are committed by drug users looking for money for their next fix, not a drop in all crime. It's not necessary for the source to provide causal analysis to establish that the drop in those crimes was "caused" by the drug program; it's enough to show simply that a sharp decrease in acquisitive crimes starting in 1987 was responsible for the decrease in total crime during that period, to provide balance and context for the Hatchard study. That there was a drug program in place which might possibly account for the sudden drop in crimes committed by drug users, is interesting additional information to provide context and balance to Hatchard et al's suggestion that there could be no other explanation for the drop in crime than that the meditators caused it.

• I find it curious that Hatchard seems to continue insisting that the downward trend in crime started in March 1988 when the ME threshold was reached; again, the data show otherwise (even Hatchard's own graph shows otherwise). By my rough quick calculation, total crime had already dropped 10% from its 1987 peak at the time of the TM "intervention." The annual crime statistics on Merseyside show an decrease in annual total crime starting with the year 1987 (also as shown by Hatchard's own tables) so to argue that crime wasn't already on a downward slope before the time of the intervention in March 1988 would be to argue against the clear evidence of the data.

• If one were trying to impress, or intimidate, a statistican, invoking Box-Jenkins and suggesting that a study is "inadequate on statistical analysis" because it's not using Box-Jenkins, would not be the way to achieve such a purpose. Box-Jenkins may have been state of the art 25 years ago, but it's now well accepted among statisticians that the technique is computationally unreliable and prone to producing spurious correlations. Many teachers of statistics and applied statisticians no longer teach it or use it at all.

• Some of the Maharishi studies involve bringing in a large group of TM-Sidhi practitioners into an area and then statistically analyzing available data to discover causal connections with a wide variety of datasets, so it wouldn't be surprising if the effect were not sustained when the meditators left the area. However, in the case of Skelmersdale, as with Fairfield Iowa, there is a resident group of TM and TM-Sidhi practitioners sufficient to consistently exceed the threshold, and yet the effect does not seem to be consistently produced or sustained over time. Since the time of the Hatchard study, crime levels in Merseyside have continued to fluctuate up and down, up and down, sometimes very steeply in either direction, rising to above the 1983-1986 levels and dropping to below the 1987-89 levels, oblivious to the presence of TM-Sidhi practitioners nearby. Fales & Markovsky's comment about a different ME study is just as apt here: "...it is hardly unreasonable to suppose that the fluctuations of the dependent variable..would have remained exactly as they were even if there had been no meditators at all."

As I've said, my opinion and critical analysis are not useful to the article itself, and I would not be providing them here if Hatchard hadn't been allowed to argue against the inclusion of the Home Office study; at that point it seemed unreasonable to allow his comments to stand unchallenged. I think what we've got in the article about these two studies is accurate, fair, and NPOV, and I don't think we need to make any change in the wording as the result of either my or Hatchard's analysis here, so shall we agree to stick to the sources and not be distracted by irrelevant commentary? Woonpton (talk) 20:07, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

P.S. I went back to the article to check the wording on the Home Office study; it was worded differently than I remembered it, and I have reworded it to bring it more in line with the source as I read it. Woonpton (talk) 23:08, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

This is excellent. I'm pleased that you took the time to explain. Each time I've gone to Guy Hatchard it was because you or Will had convinced me that the study was flawed. And I'm almost convinced again. One problem that I see with your analysis regarding when crime began dropping is that you don't take seasonality into account. That would explain the trend that begins in 1987, right? And wouldn't we still need to explain the dramatic drop in March? Nothing in Home Office data would explain that, right? TimidGuy (talk) 12:13, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

No, seasonality has nothing to do with it. A steep drop that started in 1987 and lasted through 1989 would not have anything to do with seasonality. If you look at a graph over time, you see, in the national data as well as in Merseyside data, a marked plunge during those years that really stands out on the graph. (If I could remember exactly where I'd seen those graphs, I'd point you to them so you could see it with your own eyes, but I've looked at so many different reports from the Home Office and from the Merseyside Police department I wouldn't care to try to retrace my steps to find it again. It wouldn't have occurred to me that discussing this Merseyside study would become a fulltime job, or I would have printed out all that stuff for my files to have at my fingertips for the next round.) Whether that drop had to do with a drug program, or just an ebb and flow in a heroin epidemic I don't think we have enough information to say, but the probability is fairly high that it's one of those, and not anything related to people meditating in Skelmersdale.

And no, there's no particular need to "explain" a steep drop in March 1988; as I said above, crime statistics go up and down, up and down, sometimes very steeply in either direction; that's what numbers do all by themselves without intervention from outside forces. That's why we have statistics, to enable us to distinguish something unusual from the normal up and down. As Hatchard reports in the study, "Home Office officials commented that 'recent percentage changes in Merseyside crime lie within the range of recorded Metropolitan crime rate changes'" and Home Office officials are exactly right. This drop of 13.4% is not an unusual occurrence in the annals of crime in the UK. For comparison, the greater Metropolitan London area also had a drop of 14% in 1988. In fact, all UK police forces reported a drop in crime in 1988. And while we're at it, if the graph in Hatchard's paper had been drawn correctly, that drop wouldn't look nearly as steep as it does in the graph as drawn. At any rate, there have been a number of similar and larger percentage changes in Merseyside crime statistics at different times, there's nothing unusual about this.

It is worth noting that whether you look at the percentage change from 1987-1990 or 1987-1992, Merseyside is the only police jurisdiction that reported a negative percentage change during the period (-17% for 1987-1990 and -10% for 1987-1992). (Well, West Midlands for 1987-1992, but that was just -1% so hardly worth noticing.) That might be interesting, except that in order to make anything of it as support for the hypothesis, you'd have to ignore the fatal flaw in the research, which I can't do. I've already explained what that flaw is, but let's try one more time. The hypothesis is that people participating in a group meditation program will create increased coherence in the surrounding collective consciousness such that the quality of life will improve for everyone. In this particular study, quality of life is defined as the amount of crime in a particular police jurisdiction near the meditation site. After some statistical analysis, it is announced that not only did crime go down at the time that the meditating group reached the threshold of the square root of 1% of the population, but the only credible explanation for the reduction in crime is the "intervention" of the meditating group. However, the data disprove the hypothesis on both counts. While the "total crime" statistic in Merseyside did go down in a sharp plunge that lasted from 1987 to 1989, that doesn't mean that crime went down, and if you look at the breakdown by crime categories, it's evident that interpreting the decrease in "total crime" as a decrease in crime altogether would be a great mistake. Only the acquisitive crimes typically committed by drug users went down; other crimes went up significantly. In fact, if you're looking for a percentage change that requires explanation, the dramatic climb of 29% in violent crime against persons, occurring during the same years that an increased coherence of consciousness is claimed to be responsible for a much smaller decrease in total crime, is something that truly needs to be explained by anyone who continues to insist on the validity of the conclusions of this study. If the people in that jurisdiction are having fewer of their stereos ripped off while they're at work, but getting beat up in the street more, how can that be reasonably interpreted as an improved quality of life? As I said before, it's hard to picture a coherence that would work that way. And besides, just the fact that crime has not remained low in Merseyside since then, with a large TM presence in the area (according to the Independent, 400 permanent residents are associated with TM) throws doubt on the conclusions of the study and makes a statistical artifact the most reasonable explanation for the results, especially since Box-Jenkins is known to produce spurious results.

Make no mistake, the research is flawed. When I was teaching an undergraduate class that required people to design and carry out small experiments and write them up as if for publication, if one of the students had missed an obvious confound like this, they would not have got a passing grade. This is basic research methods 101.

I spent some time last weekend reading some of the critiques of the Maharishi Effect research along with the inevitable off-the-point rebuttals. Again and again, the rebuttals pick out some trivial irrelevant point to focus on, while leaving the telling points of the critique unanswered. I wouldn't care to speculate seriously on the reason for that, but it's quite annoying to read. The current discussion seems to have taken a similar pattern: "This research is fatally flawed because there's an obvious confound that undermines the conclusions." "But you didn't take seasonality into account." Huh? Not relevant, and doesn't address the serious problems with the study. I think I've laid out the case well enough; I hope we can be done with this conversation. As I keep saying, it can have no useful purpose for the article, and this talk page is supposed to be for discussing the article. So can we be done with this now, please? Woonpton (talk) 16:39, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

The reason we're discussing this is that it's questionable whether the Home Office study is relevant to the article. Ordinarily, per WP:NOR, we'd have a source that makes the connection, but we don't. We're relying on your opinion. And we have to make sure that your analysis is sound. I think it's only fair to give Guy a chance to respond to this critique. TimidGuy (talk) 12:22, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Of course the Home Office study is relevant to the article. As Will said above, "Hatchard's belief that his explanation is better than theirs is not a sufficient reason to delete it." As I've said half a dozen times, neither Hatchard's nor my analysis and critique are relevant to the article itself, and I would have preferred not to clutter up the talk page with this debate. But just to be very clear, we are not relying on any analysis of mine for the inclusion of the study. Hatchard's study claims that the meditators in Skelmersdale improved the quality of life in Merseyside by dramatically reducing crime. The Home Office study shows that the only crimes that went down were the acquisitive crimes that are typically committed by drug users, while other, more heinous, crimes went up substantially. These are two sources that contradict each other; it wouldn't serve the reader to include the first without the other. There's no causal analysis in the Home Office study, and they draw no conclusion claiming causality, so Hatchard's criticism that they are claiming backward causality is not an accurate representation of the source or a valid criticism. While the inclusion of the source does not rely on any analysis of mine, the arguments made here that because Hatchard says the Home Office doesn't explain the drop in crime, it shouldn't be included, do rely on Hatchard's opnion. Woonpton (talk) 16:47, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

If the Home Office Study does not make reference to the ME study or the larger topic of the article, it is not a compliant reference. We can't or shouldn't be adding content that does not directly reference the topic of the article. Adding the Home Office Study in conjunction with the Hatchard study to make a point about the Hatchard study is original research. With respect for the amount of work that must have gone into this discussion, still we are left with guidelines and policies that define an encyclopedia, and not for example a research paper. (olive (talk) 17:00, 11 January 2010 (UTC))

We already took this to a noticeboard and the opinion of uninvolved editors is that it's OK to include. Is this a case of ignoring the input from noticeboards?   Will Beback  talk  18:17, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

A reminder: Consensus does not trump policy. And the Notice board and the comments of editors there do not trump policy. Including information that does not directly refer to the topic of the article is a policy violation, and is WP:OR. Do what you want, but adding the Home Office study and connecting it to another study requires OR and violates EWP:NOR. Ignoring the Notice board? One should not confuse ignoring with disagreeing and with upholding consistent accurate use of policy. (olive (talk) 13:52, 12 January 2010 (UTC))

In other words, "Yes". The consensus is that there is no original research whatsoever in reporting that another study of the same crime trends, using the same statistics, for substantially the same period came to a different conclusion. This ship has sailed. Fladrif (talk) 19:14, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I suggest you reread the policy.(olive (talk) 20:02, 12 January 2010 (UTC))

I've read it many times. Moreover, I understand it. Your continued objections suggest strongly to me that you do not understand it. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to assist you in understanding the points that are apparently confusing you. And, I suggest you reread WP:WIKILAWYERING, WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT WP:GAME and WP:COI. Fladrif (talk) 20:46, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

The noticeboard assumed that the study was relevant to the phenomenon identified by Hatchard. On a different point, Woonpton says that the Home Office study doesn't show causality, yet the article says that the methadone project drove the reduction of crime in two categories. Seems like we should at least reword that. I sent Hatchard Woontpon's latest set of comments, and here's his reply, which bears in part on the category question:

"Certainly the discussion is very useful, however descriptive discussion and references to specific results in individual categories of crime in certain places isn't sufficient to critique a study as we will see from the following. You need to do analysis over a long period of time and in this way you can establish a casual link. My study does this. The alternative explanation of a drop in drug related crime due to a treatment programme does not fit the data as we have already discussed. The key question that a researcher has to answer is the causality question, ie which indicator changed first and the drug hypothesis fails this test. Box Jenkins is an established statistical methodology. However the effect is so clear from the monthly data that you don't need rocket science to see that something very unusual and unprecedented happened in March 1988. It is not a result that was teased out of the data. The Maharishi Effect is a predictive theory which can be tested. My analysis started before the 1980s and continued up to 1991 and the phase transition model fits the data to this point. Merseyside went from having the second highest crime rate in the UK in 1987 to having the lowest among metropolitan districts in 1993. As to other metropolitan figures, your correspondent is right there are statistical blips in monthly crime data. This is due to the fact that many metropolitan police districts have sloppy closeout practices at the month-end reporting deadline. Some districts record completed crime reports to hand which can include data from other months or leave out significant chunks of current data and others take care to ensure that monthly data accurately reflects the actual crime committed in the month. Interviews with Merseyside statisticians confirmed that Merseyside fell very squarely in the latter category and data collected separately from West Lancashire confirmed a parallel trend of reduced crime of similar dimension in the March 1988 period. This is a very powerful confirmation of the veracity of the unusual Merseyside drop in crime. I cannot vouch for Metro London recording practices at the time as I have not studied them. If practices are sloppy in a district you may find large swings from month to month. High one month and then low the next or vice versa as the stats department struggles to cope with high work loads. This can be identified statistically as an outlier in a data series and does not qualify as a significant trend. This was not the case in Merseyside. In later years during the nineties police departments adopted electronic reporting methods based on hand held devices. Any crime research during the nineties needs to study the timing of the introduction of these devices and associated reporting regulations as they had a massive impact on reported crime data in the UK and rendered time series analysis problematic in the nineties and over periods including the nineties. I have dealt with the analysis of particular crime categories over the period using monthly data and the hypothesis held up very well. This was not published for space reasons. Discussions of yearly data of specific categories without reference to national trends are not sufficient to draw reliable conclusions.  Merseyside is not immune to nation crime trends; however its perfomance exceeds those in other districts. As to the Quality of Life, in 2000 the meditating community in Skelmersdale won a prestigious BURA award (British Urban Renewal Award). I updated my research in my PhD thesis of 2000, a trend of improved quality of life was very evident to this point. In fact anyone living in Merseyside through this period will tell you the transformation in quality of life was not just palpable, it was stellar and certainly it was measurable as my thesis showed. Subsequent to 2000, I have not completed any research on Merseyside. However I can report that the model community built there is being emulated in Suffolk. The figures reported by the Independent newspaper are anecdotal. You would need to refer to the community records to adequately assess the magnitude of the current effect. All the very best Guy Hatchard " TimidGuy (talk) 12:34, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

That was just pathetic. Setting aside all the fluff which have nothing whatsoever to do with the discussion: Specific references to particular categories of crime is not only sufficient to critique a study, it is sufficient to refute it. The facts are indisputable. The only categories of reported crime that went down in Merseyside were acquisitive crimes. All other categories of reported crime went up. Why? The ME as a predictive theory provides no explanation whatsoever as to why one category of crime would be affected and the rest not at all. We can leave aside the intriguing question as to why the Washington DC study claimed improvements there in the very catetories of crime that were utterly unaffected in Merseyside. On the other hand, the Home Office study of the drug prevention program provides an explanation which fits the data perfectly. If an Intro to Statistics student turned in this study, got a failing grade, and then showed up at his or her professor's door offering this as an explanation to try to justify this utterly incompetent analysis, the best they'd get was the option to drop the class as Incomplete and a suggestion to choose a major that didn't involve numbers. Somebody actually gave this guy a PhD for this? It beggars the imagination. Fladrif (talk) 19:14, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

An attack of a living person on any page is not appropriate per WP:BLP. Guy Hatchard has been good enough to add comments to this discussion. He is i n a sense a guest on this page. An attack of his credentials is not acceptable and I have removed the parts of the posts per BLP which were related to those attacks. (olive (talk) 21:03, 12 January 2010 (UTC))

An attack on a person is not appropriate. A critique of research, including the credentials of the researcher, is entirely appropriate. IIRC, there have been comments here about the credentials of TM-Sidhi critics such as James Randi. Hatchard is in no way a "guest on this page" - there's no indication that he has ever even read it, much less posted to it.   Will Beback  talk  21:12, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

No university I ever attended, and there were several, would consider Fladrif's comments a "critique". If you feel Flad's comments are appropriate please feel free to revert me.(olive (talk) 21:32, 12 January 2010 (UTC))

There have been comments from editors to the effect that the statistical analysis at the heart of this study is flawed. Saying so does not violate WP:BLP.   Will Beback  talk  21:39, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Clearly, the universities you attended did not include Harvard Law School.

Mister Hart, here is a dime. Take it, call your mother, and tell her there is serious doubt about you ever becoming a lawyer.

Fladrif (talk) 22:03, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

It's very accommodating of Hatchard to share this background. However without reviewing the original data it's hard to really delve into this much further. If Hatchard wants to defend his paper he's also welcome to register an account here. However Misplaced Pages is based on reliable secondary sources so personal explanations are not really relevant to our article writing, though they are interesting.   Will Beback  talk  21:05, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

The conceit of this exercise is that TG is sending comments to Hatchard, who is providing responses to TG, who is then posting them here. Not being of a suspicious bent, I'm taking everyone at their word that this is what is actually going on, so Hatchard isn't adding comments at all, is he? Or is he? In any event, my criticism of Hatchard's comments is not directed at any editor, nor even at his credentials, but at the utter absurdity of the explanation that he has forwareed to TimidGuy to post. I am being no more critical of this rationale - and in fact, a good deal less critical and personal - than other editors on these pages have been of authors whose conclusions they found distasteful. I've never seen anyone so bold as to suggest that those comments were violative of WP:BLPFladrif (talk) 21:11, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

The problem, Will, is that we don't have a source that says that the Home Office study is an alternative explanation for the phenomenon identified by Hatchard, which was a large drop in crime beginning in March of 1988. As Woonpton and Hatchard point out, the Home Office can't show causality, since it wasn't designed to do so. And as Hatchard says in his study, the methadone program can't explain the drop in crime that began in March. Yet we're offering it as an alternative explanation. Woonpton says it's there because it says that crime didn't go down in all categories, that it went down in some and up in others. Well, then we should say that, but in the context that total crime went down. But the way it's written now, it sounds as if it's an alternate explanation for the reduction in crime. TimidGuy (talk) 12:15, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

There are undoubtedly things about the H.O. Merseyside crime study that are unexplained, and there are things about Hatchard's Merseyside crime study that are unexplained too. Why did crime go up in the borough closest to Skelmersdale in the same year when the MTI reached its highest level? Where did Hatchard get the MTI equation from anyway? While these are among the interesting questions that we've written thousands of words about, we'll never be able to resolve them on our own, or even through emailing the author. Let's just report the studies and let the readers make up their own minds.   Will Beback  talk  12:33, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

While we're listing unexplained things, why did crime go up in Merseyside itself in 1990 and 1991, the study years during which the percentage of TM-Sidhi participants was at its highest (again, according to Hatchard's own graph)? There's a lot here that baffles explanation, but as Will says, we won't resolve them here, and we need to stick with sources.

My concern about the statistical analysis, for example, isn't just my opinion but is echoed in at least five reliable sources (I'm not counting Park): to save space I'll just quote one here: "The Box-Jenkins technique does not impose a theoretically justified stochastic structure on the data; rather, it allows for extremely flexible adjustments to account for noise, so the likelihood of finding significant correlations by chance is high. The significance levels reported in the article are the probabilities that the correlation coefficients are not equal to zero; they are not the probabilities that the model is correct... Generally, unless constraints are imposed a priori on the Box-Jenkins transformations and error structure, one is playing Russian roulette with the significance test, and will encounter spuriously significant correlations." A brief summary of these criticisms should be in the article, with reference to all the sources, in order to give the reader a balanced picture of how reliable sources view this phenomenon.

The problem, Will, is that we don't have a source that says that the Home Office study is an alternative explanation for the phenomenon identified by Hatchard, which was a large drop in crime beginning in March of 1988. Actually, there is a source that says there's no phenomenon here that needs to be explained; Hatchard himself, quoting Home Office officials: "recent percentage changes in Merseyside crime lie within the range of recorded Metropolitan crime rate changes;" in other words there's nothing phenomenal about that particular drop (which occurs partway down a larger drop, as shown in Hatchard's own graph); it's just one of the normal ups and downs that occur in crime statistics without any intervention at all. Woonpton (talk) 14:59, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Minimum

This is a little off topic, but I'm trying to understand this. Let's say there's a community a 100,000 and in it are 50 households in which two people meditate. While 100 is far fewer than the 1000 required to bring coherence to the entire community, can each pair of meditators bring coherence to their immediate neighborhoods of 200 people? In other words, would 10,000 people benefit from the ME created by the 100 practitioners? Do I understand the concept correctly? Or is there no effect because 1% of the entire community need to be meditating for the threshold to be met?   Will Beback  talk  12:08, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Interesting. I've often wondered this myself. Seems like we should see a greater effect in Fairfield. Will contact David OJ with your questions. TimidGuy (talk) 12:38, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

I've wondered that too, after BwB said he believes even two people can have an effect, and I realized that two people practicing TM-Sidhi together meet the square root of 1% threshold for a population of 400; who's to say that N=100 is the lower limit, since that limit wasn't established empirically. But then as far as that goes, neither were the 1% and square root of 1% thresholds.

Whatever David OJ has to say in response to the question may be of general interest to our discussion here but can't help us with the article, since we have to rely on reliable published sources, and from what I've seen so far of his published work, I'm seeing very little that bears on this topic. In OJ et al 1988, in the discussion about the ME equation, he explains the absence of an intercept in what is apparently supposed to be a linear equation thus: "The absence of a constant term follows from the assumption that the effect vanishes (and does not diverge) as N tends to zero." The assumption must not have been tested, or surely the results would be written up somewhere (this would be a very important finding) but this assumption should have been tested before the equation was even published (that would be part of the job of peer review properly done, to ask those questions "On what basis are you assuming that the effect disappears as N approaches zero, is there an empirical, theoretical or logical basis for that assumption?" etc) and regardless, it should have been tested sometime in the 20 years from then to now. At any rate, the implication of the assumption is that the effect doesn't disappear until N is approaching zero, which would suggest that N can be a very small number and still produce the effect. Woonpton (talk) 16:19, 30 December 2009 (UTC) It's not the part of the assumption that says the effect =0 when N=0 that needs to be tested; that assumption follows from the theory and hypothesis. The part of the assumption that's at issue here is "as N tends to zero" and to establish at what point the effect disappears as N approaches zero, would be a crucial and Important finding.Woonpton (talk) 16:46, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes interesting for us editors but not for the article unless we can get refs. Look forward to OJ's response. --BwB (talk) 20:13, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

I assume your comment refers to OJ's private response to TG, not to what I've quoted from the published research report, which (summarized of course, and without my comments) would be perfectly fine for the article if we decided to include it. Woonpton (talk) 20:28, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

In Orme-Johnson's rebuttal to Schrodt he writes "Nor did we assert that no impact would occur below the square root of 1% threshold; it is presented as a sufficient condition for measurable improvements, not as a necessary condition for any improvement." Woonpton (talk) 18:17, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

So was he saying that there really is no threshold at all? That's quite different from what Hatcherd said in his study, which was co-authored by Orme-Johnson.   Will Beback  talk  19:20, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

That's what he seems to be saying there, although it differs from some of his own writings, for example the 2009 rebuttal to Fales & Markovsky, in which he writes,

"The critics assert that there is no rationale for the threshold effects in the Maharishi Effect theory, which holds that the effect will suddenly manifest in the system as a whole after 1% of the population is practicing the TM technique or group of the square root of 1% is practicing the TM-Sidhi program. Such sudden sharp changes from relatively disordered tomore ordered states are "phase transitions" which are common throughout nature" (followed by many examples of phase transition in nature).

You will have to draw your own conclusions.Woonpton (talk) 23:19, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

That seems to say that the system is still disordered below the threshold for a phase transition, but that coherence is achieved suddenly once the threshold is met. If so, then there appear to be two contradictory views on the nature of the threshold.   Will Beback  talk  22:21, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Canada study

Why are we adding a whole section devoted to a single study that hasn't received any attention? If we were to add a paragraph for every study we'd overwhelm the article with primary sources. The appropriate weight would be something more like a sentence in "other studies".   Will Beback  talk  20:00, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

I wondered the same, and agree with your assessment. Woonpton (talk) 20:30, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree the text could be shortened or could be added to another section, unless I'm missing something.(olive (talk) 02:45, 2 January 2010 (UTC))

Poor Canada! Anyway, it is interesting to have studies from other countries than the US. We seem to be quite US centric in may of the Wiki articles on TM related topics, so nice to get a little variety of perspective. I vote to keep the Canada study and then be more critical of further studies, always baring in mind that we can replace the Canada study. So let's leave this for now, eh!!? --BwB (talk) 11:37, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

We're not talking about deleting Canada, just giving an obscure study less weight. The reason we devote so much space to the Middle East and Washington DC studies are thoat those received independent attention and responses, and they are frequently cited by the movement. Neither of those is true of the Canada study.

I presume that Luke has a copy in hand. Can he or anyone else explain why the threshold for a positive response in Canada was 1625 participants, the square root of the population of Canada and the U.S combined? Since the population of Canada alone is far smaller, I'd have thought the threshold would have been far lower as well.

Second question: were the two studies reported in one paper?   Will Beback  talk  18:02, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, I don't know where 1625 came from, but the World Bank says the population of Canada is 33,311,389 (could that be right?) of which the square root of 1% is 577. Woonpton (talk) 18:32, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

The 1985 population was 25,843,000. List of population of Canada by years. Would the square root of 1% of that be 508? If so, why wasn't the threshold met when that number of participants was achieved? Why were three times that number required?   Will Beback  talk  19:16, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

You're asking me? I'm still trying to understand why, if the square root of 1% of the present US population is 1754, the Invincible America daily tallies of yogic flyers in Fairfield gives 2000 as the threshold for creating peace and prosperity and invincibility for the entire US of A, and since even that number has been exceeded for months at a time during the last couple of years, why aren't we there yet? And yes, 508 is correct. Woonpton (talk) 20:51, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

1% sq. rt. of the combined population of US and Canada for the years of the studies, I think. --BwB (talk) 21:26, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

I am thinking that the TM-Sidhi group was in FF and the authors of the study looked at the effect of this group on the crime, etc. in Canada for those years assuming that the size of the group (1625) was large enough to create a positive effect in Canada as well as USA. --BwB (talk) 21:29, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

FF? The way Luke wrote it, it sounds like they did not get positive results until 1625 practitioners were active, while theory seems to say that they should have seen positive results anytime they had over 508 participants.   Will Beback  talk  21:43, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, Will. FF = Fairfield, IA. The group was in Fairfield. Since the group was larger that the sq. rt. 1% of the combined pops of USA and Canada, then the ME could be measured in Canada as well. The study looks at the effect of the 1625 Yogic Flyers in FF on the quality of life, crime, etc. in Canada. If the ME group was in Canada and was 508, then it would have the effect for Canada. At least, that's the theory. If we have 8000-ish in one place anywhere in the world (as we had in Dec 1983/Jan 1984) then it can effect the whole world. --BwB (talk) 21:50, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Can you send me a copy of the study?

If BwB is correct, then similar results should be evident in every city and state of the US. If so, why did they only look at Canada?   Will Beback  talk  21:55, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Also, the study period was 1982-1985, but the study was not published until 1995. That seems like an unusually long delay in presenting a finding. Is there any explanation for why they waited ten years to publish the study results?   Will Beback  talk  21:52, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, BwB the 1625 figure was for the population of the US and Canada combined, perhaps I should have made that clearer. The paper was published in 1995, but it dealt with data gathered in the 1980s, which was analyzed later. --Luke Warmwater101 (talk) 23:33, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Luke, Do you a copy of have the study? Does it explain why they included the population of Canada but excluded the population of Mexico? Or why they waited ten years to publish the study?   Will Beback  talk  23:52, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Don't ask me mate! Maybe they only thought to check at a later date. Have to ask the authors of study, I guess. --BwB (talk) 21:55, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm asking anyone who has the study in hand.   Will Beback  talk  22:19, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

If the threshold for Maharishi Effect is calculated based on the population which falls within a circle centered on the Yogic Flyers, as Hatcherd suggests, then the population of Mexico counts as much as the population of Canada. Nome, Alaska, is about 3,000 miles from Fairfield, Iowa. A 3,000 circle centered on "FF" includes all of Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and much of northern South America. (Hawaii is 4,000 miles away, meaning that to cover the entire U.S the population figure would be yet higher). More modestly, Vancouver and Halifax, on opposite coasts, are about the same distance away as Mexico City, 1600 miles. The population of Mexico in 1985 was more than 70 million people, about half of which least probably resided within 1600 miles of FF. (Plus most of Cuba). Why wouldn't those people count towards the threshold if it's calculated according to Hatcherd's theory?   Will Beback  talk  22:19, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Will, you're running into one of the issues raised by critics, (which we do actually cover in the article, though we could do a better job with it.) Both Fales & Markovsky and Schrodt raise this issue: why is the unit of measurement people rather than distance?

"The implication is paradoxical" say Fales & Markovsky. "Assume there is a 100-person TM Sidhi group in downtown Chicago and another in rural Fairfield Iowa. Ignoring for this example the smaller effect of non-TM-Sidhi meditators, ME=1,000,000 for both groups. This means that the effect would have a radius of a few miles for the Chicago group, but more than 50 times that distance for the other group."

And Schrodt:

"...the population figures used to determine whether the effect should be activebear no resemblance to the actual population distribution in the Middle East. Specifically, the research used the populations defined by political boundaries...and the comined populations of Israel and Lebanon to provide the population baseline. This ignores the sizable populations in the metropolitan areas of Amman, Irbid and Damascus. Amman is closer to Jerusalem than Ashquelon, Irbid is closer than Haifa, Damasscus is closer than Elat, and all are closer than Beirut, and yet the populations of those Israeli cities are included in the calculations; those of Syria and Jordan are not"

Orme-Johnson replies, as we report in the article, that the Maharishi Effect research has applied the square root of 1% formula consistently "in terms of political units -- cities, states, nations-- rather than purely on geographical distances which ignore these community boundaries. These political units reflect greater homogeneity, closer personal ties, more frequent interactions, and stronger internal lines of influence...than those across boundaries and hence cannot be ignored in calculating the pattern of 'spread' of predicted coherent effects on collective consciousness and behavior."

He goes on to say, "When estimating the population influenced on an international scale, those nations geographically closer to where the group is located have always been predicted to be influenced by a smaller group than those further away..." This is new to me; I haven't seen this anywhere else. Have you?

But this begs the question, then why in this study was only Canada affected and not the US? I don't have the study (does anyone actually have this study?) but one can assume that the original hypothesis must have involved both the US and Canada, or they wouldn't have used the combined populations to figure the threshold. Woonpton (talk) 01:17, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for finding that. While Canada is closer to Fairfield than Mexico, neither is particularly close. It'd seem to me that Baja California is just as similar to California as Quebec is New York. Further, I recall seeing a "press conference" in which Maharishi was asked about the effect of a group of Yogic Flyers practicing near a border, in which he replied that to get the best results for a country they should be positioned in the center, otherwise the forces of coherency would spill across to the border and benefit the other country. I'll have to re-read the OJ paper and see if he indicates what the theoretical basis is for his views on this.   Will Beback  talk  01:28, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Here is what the study says, I hope it helps:

Estimates of the USA and Canadian population were obtained from the US Bureau of the census (1987) and Statistics Canada (1988) of the Canadian Socioeconomic Information System, A fixed threshold was used in the present study, rather than a threshold which could vary in size weekly, according to the square root of one percent formula, because the Canadian population was only available annually, and weekly interpolations might not be accurate.

The square root of one percent of the USA and Canadian population was approximately 1625 at the end of 1985, the most recent year for which data on the endogenous variables were available at the time of the study. This conservative 1625 threshold was adopted, since unlike a threshold adopted on the first year or middle year of the study, exceeding this threshold would mean a predicted influence on whatever year it occurred. --Luke Warmwater101 (talk) 23:56, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

So they include the entire population of the US including Alaska and Hawaii but excludes the entire populations of countries that are the same distance away? Does that make sense to anyone?   Will Beback  talk  23:58, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand the hypothesis of this study -do they state it?   Will Beback  talk  00:00, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Studies can and do limit their scopes. I'm not sure I see the concern. We have the study, its scope, and we determine if it is reliable or not per Misplaced Pages. (olive (talk) 00:07, 3 January 2010 (UTC))

I don't have the study, but I would assume the authors laid out the populations they would include in the study -Canada and US. Hawaii and Alaska would be included but not Mexico. We could hypothesize as to why they decided to not include Mexico, but only the authors know. Possibly population data was not easily available. I don't see the relevance here, though. Am I missing something.(olive (talk) 00:20, 3 January 2010 (UTC))

While odd, it's OK to limit the investigation of outcomes to Canada. However in this case the authors seem to be redefining the Maharishi Effect itself. since it's only a hypothesis, they are free to do so but they should make it explicit, by saying something like, "we reject the view of Orme-Johnson and Hatchard that the ME radiates in all directions equally and instead believes that it follows arbitrary boundaries of our own definition." Do they say anything like that or is the discrepancy unexplained?   Will Beback  talk  01:20, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

We've been discussing this study for a couple of days now and there's still no evidence of any notability or other reason to give it so much weight. Unless there's anything else I'll go ahead with trimming it down and moving it to "other studies".   Will Beback  talk  22:00, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Will, that will save me a trip. I was going to go to my university library (an hour away) to get a copy of this paper tomorrow, but if we're not going to devote a separate section to it, I won't bother fighting the first-day-of-the-term crowd. I'm still curious, because it seems to illustrate some serious questions, but not so curious that it can't wait til next weekend. At any rate, the problem it illustrates is treated in Schrodt and Fales & Markovsky. Woonpton (talk) 00:22, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Will, does the study specifically say that the group was in FF, Iowa? We now have thext in the article that reads "..when the number of Yogic Flyers in Fairfield, Iowa,..." Just want to make sure we are accurately reporting study. --BwB (talk) 15:27, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

TG was kind enough to send me the study. The main group of Yogic Flyers was in FF, but apparently other groups were active in D.C and Vlodrop, and I'm still trying to figure out how they figure into the total. Most of the literature I've seen says that the Maharishi Effect occurs when there are a sufficient number of Yogic Flyers in one place. The way in which YF's in multiple locations have an additive effect does not seem to be discussed as much. Does anyone have an insight into this?   Will Beback  talk 

Why was the material added back? This is a single paper, conducted by people connected to Maharishi University of Management, which hasn't received any attention from independent sources. The entire "other sources" section is from primary sources, but if we keep the coverage of individual studies short it's not a major problem. But if folks are using Misplaced Pages to promote their studies then that is a problem and I'd ask for the whole section to be deleted. Let's keep our perspective on the importance of these studies. If we can't do that then we shouldn't be editing this article.   Will Beback  talk  22:43, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

I'll assume Luke was not aware of the discussion on condensing this material. However, you are making a lot of assumptions, Will. Who is using Misplaced Pages to promote their studies. You would ask a whole section be deleted? What perspective and what importance? Was the Canada study peer reviewed in a reliable journal?

The Canada study should in my opinion be reduced and added to other studies. I'l make that change based on the discussion here. (olive (talk) 22:55, 5 January 2010 (UTC))

I see that Luke has condensed the study. Is this acceptable? (olive (talk) 23:10, 5 January 2010 (UTC))

I hadn't seen this discussion and just made corrections to material that did not accurately reflect the source; if someone wants to condense it further I have no objection. Woonpton (talk) 23:23, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Luke expanded the material without any discussion. He even added back a poorer version of the citation, undoing a positive contribution to the article. The rest of the section is entirely devoted to a single paper, also written by MUM people. That material was also added by Luke. This is excessive weight on primary sources that haven't received any independent attention, and it constitutes non-neutral editing.   Will Beback  talk  23:39, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

I'll give Luke the benefit of the doubt as I said above, and suggest he didn't see the discussion in which the Canada study was being considered. The edits may have created a non neutral aspect to the article given the discussion, but unless we know what Luke was thinking here I'd say lets wait and see if the editor is non neutral. You seem intent on hanging Luke. Any special reason. (olive (talk) 23:52, 5 January 2010 (UTC))

I do assume good faith, but he was aware of this discussion. After I'd posted several questions with no response I went to his talk page to ask him to respond. He posted some text, which partially answered one question, but hasn't participated otherwise. The editing is non-neutral, and it's coming from a single editor. His motivation is not important, but his actions are. Note that there's still no explanation from him about his latest edits.   Will Beback  talk  00:17, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

(ec) :I've just gone back and looked at Will's summary that was there before Luke added back material; it's better than what's there now and it's all we need for that study in the "other studies" section. I think we should restore that version.Woonpton (talk) 00:21, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Will, I was not aware that you had several questions from me specifically, and though I understood that the study might moved to another section, I absolutely did not realize the editors wanted it reduced to a single sentence. If I missed that, I apologize to everybody.

I had no intention of offending you when I added some of the original information to your edits, in a shorter form from the original version. Some of I felt was necessary, because it made things clearer, there were for instance two studies, not one, with different findings. Also, I did not think my version was particularly long, it is now four sentences:

Panayotis Assimakis, University of Crete, and Dillbeck published two studies in 1995 in Psychological Reports. . Using a time series analysis of data from 1982-1985 the authors showed that the quality of life for Canadians improved significantly when the number of yogic flyers in Fairfield, Iowa, exceeded the square root of 1% of the combined populations of Canada and the U.S. Improvement in the quality of life was measured in the first study as a decline of violent fatalities, cigarette consumption, and worker-days lost in strike. The second study showed that when the number of participants reached the required threshold, a corresponding decrease of violence and fatal accidents occurred in Canada.

I made my changes in good faith. I wanted to respect the desire for having the studies displayed less prominently while maintaining the more relevant information. If this is not what the other editors intended I am, of course, open to hearing it.--Luke Warmwater101 (talk) 00:44, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Luke, that was mostly not accurate to the source; it has been corrected to this:

Panayotis Assimakis, University of Crete, and Dillbeck published two studies in 1995 in Psychological Reports. . Using a time series analysis of data the authors concluded that the quality of life for Canadians improved significantly when the number of yogic flyers in Fairfield, Iowa, exceeded the square root of 1% of the combined populations of Canada and the U.S. Improvement in the quality of life was measured in the first study as a decline in a composite index made up of three causes of violent death: motor vehicle fatalities, suicide and homicide, from 1983 to 1985. In the second study the quality of life was measured by a decline in the same three causes of violent death, plus cigarette consumption and worker-days lost in strike, from 1972 to 1986.

I still think one sentence is all this study merits. Woonpton (talk) 01:00, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Woonpton, your edits are excellent, I really like this version. --Luke Warmwater101 (talk) 02:26, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Luke, let me ask again the basic question that I asked at the start of this thread: why are we devoting so much space to these studies? Let's broaden the discussion to include the paper by Dillbeck that covers five studies. What makes these two papers significant? Have they been discussed in any independent sources?   Will Beback  talk  01:14, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

I am not really sure I understand your question. The studies are on the ME and the topic of the section is the ME. They are peer reviewed, which, as we have read in earlier threads, is a generally accepted standard of reputability. For that reason I think they are appropriately placed. Depending on what in your opinion "significant" means, they may or may not be so; however, that will also be true for a lot of information that is found in wikipedia, and whose presence none of us would ever think of questioning. As for the studies being independently verified, I am not aware that this is the standard commonly applied in wikipedia, but I am still learning, so please tell me if I am missing something--Luke Warmwater101 (talk) 02:12, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Studies like these are primary sources. Maharishi has probably spoken for many hours on the topic, and those comments are also primary sources. The movement has conducted over 600 studies. Imagine if we devoted this much space to every one? And why bother, if we're just reporting what they say. We could simply provide links to the abstracts. Misplaced Pages article should be based mainly on secondary sources. The three studies to which we devote space (Middle East, D.C., and Merseyside) have been discussed in secondary sources and therefore have greater significance.   Will Beback  talk  02:37, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

For the relevant policy, see WP:PSTS.   Will Beback  talk  02:55, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

This is a little surprising and smells a little bit like an attack. Why would any editor add the available studies on a topic? Are they peer reviewed? Are they published in reputable journals? Then, would they be added? One would think so. If a study is a concern bring it here. Discuss it. Luke seems to have made good faith edits, that may be more complete than what was there before. What's the concern? And how did his edits on the Canada studies shift to accusations that deal with other studies on the ME. Perplexing state of affairs.(olive (talk) 02:31, 6 January 2010 (UTC))

"Why was this added?" That's the question I asked in the first place. Editing in good faith doesn't mean that the edits are consistent with WP policies and guidelines.   Will Beback  talk  02:55, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Will, you seemed to be very interested in the ME theory on how it applied to distance, nationality, et. (see discussion on Map below). This is an interesting study because it looks at the effect of a ME group in one country (FF, IA) on a different sovereign nation (Canada). The ME theory postulates "effects at a distance" and this study give a clear demonstration of this effect. I think, for this reason it should be kept. And let's not be too hard on Luke. Innocent mistake, new version created. Like what we got. --BwB (talk) 11:23, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the ME theory is interesting to me. I don't agree that that fact is relevant to Misplaced Pages policies and guidelines. My interest is not a sufficient reason to give non-notable primary studies undue weight.   Will Beback  talk  11:40, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

I think it's important to add this study and additional studies on the Maharishi Effect, a major topic in this article. The Maharishi Effect has received a lot of media attention. It's important to give the reader a full picture of the extent of the research. WP:V says that scientific studies are the most reliable soures: "Academic and peer-reviewed publications are highly valued and usually the most reliable sources in areas where they are available, such as history, medicine, and science." TimidGuy (talk) 11:28, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Media attention and scientific reviews are important gauges of the importance of studies. How much attention have the Dillbeck papers received? Any? Primary studies are fine for some purposes, but Misplaced Pages articles should be built on secondary sources, like reviews, reliable media sources, etc.   Will Beback  talk  11:40, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Ah, the Reader, The Reader. I had forgotten all about The Reader. I thought Wiki was all about The Editor!. --BwB (talk) 11:32, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

There is some confusion in my opinion that media sources are somehow considered superior or more reliable than scholarly articles. That is not at all what Misplaced Pages says. In reading what TimidGuy just posted above, it is clear that peer reviewed papers are considered very relevant by Misplaced Pages. They are definitely in a category of their own. In addition, when Misplaced Pages gives examples of primary sources it does not anywhere list peer reviewed studies, it mentions notes of laboratory and field experiments or observations written by the person(s) who conducted…the experiment, but a published peer reviewed articles is further removed from that.--Luke Warmwater101 (talk) 17:00, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

This isn't about reliability, per se. A study is like a memoir: even when it's published by a reliable journal it's still a primary source. Every year thousands of studies are conducted. Most of them are significant only to a field and are lucky to be cited a few times in other, equally obscure, papers. Secondary sources, like scholarly reviews and media attention, establish which sources are significant and put them into context. Once a study has been shown to be significant, then the study itself is an excellent source for its details. Without the "filter" of secondary sources, we're on our own to decide which studies to devote space to. Hatchard says there've been at least forty studies on the ME. Who decided that the Canada study was worth devoting space to, and on what basis? That decision was made solely by a Misplaced Pages editor, and presumably because he thought was interesting. Now that we have it in the article, are we telling readers anything they wouldn't know by reading the study itself? Without any secondary sources about it there's nothing more we can add. The concept that Misplaced Pages article should be based mainly on secondary sources is well-established and serves the purpose of writing an encyclopedia.   Will Beback  talk  19:31, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Scientific studies are secondary sources. WP:V says, "The most reliable sources are usually peer-reviewed journals...". This is a peer-reviewed journal. It's considered the most reliable source by Misplaced Pages standards." As Luke points out, WP:V says that the field notes, etc., are considered primary, but the study itself is a secondary source. TimidGuy (talk) 11:43, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

There are two separate issues here, and I know they are easy to confuse. Sources may be primary, secondary, or tertiary, and they may be reliable or unreliable. There are reliable and unreliable primary sources, just as there are reliable and unreliable secondary sources. Peer-reviewed studies are reliable primary sources. Reviews are secondary sources.

There are many kinds of reliable primary sources. Autobiographies can be reliable primary sources. Court records are reliable primary sources. In the case of studies, they are primary because the same people are creating the experiment and writing about it. The fact that others check the math and publish does not transform studies into secondary sources. Primary sources may be used within limits, but WP articles should be based mainly on secondary sources.   Will Beback  talk 

Thanks for the clarification. Let's keep the Canada study. I'm sure readers will find it educational and illuminating. --BwB (talk) 12:06, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

I vote to keep the Canada study and then be more critical of further studies, always baring in mind that we can replace the Canada study. So let's leave this for now, eh!!? --BwB (talk) 11:37, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
We're not talking about deleting Canada, just giving an obscure study less weight.   Will Beback  talk  18:02, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Let's keep the study in the version it is now and forget about any more discussion on the issue. --BwB (talk) 20:50, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Are we making progress in this discussion?   Will Beback  talk  12:24, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

You asked, "Why was this added?" I think we're making progress in answering that. Regarding PSTS, WP:OR says "published notes of laboratory and field experiments or observations written by the person(s) who conducted or observed the experiments" is a primary source. The Canada study isn't published notes or observations. I guess my feeling is that it's important to include the studies and their findings well in this article. The Maharishi Effect is a hypothesis, and we need to show that this hypothesis has been studied and what the results are. We need to show that peer reviewers for a variety of journals found that this research met the standard of science. I don't see how the Canada study could be reduced. Just saying the study suggested an improvement in quality of life meaningless. It could mean, for all the reader knows, that there was less air pollution or something. We might be able to condense the last two sentences into one. TimidGuy (talk) 12:37, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

As we discussed before, there has never been a study of TM-Sidhi-related effects with a negative outcome. (The two studies with apparently negative outcomes really had positive outcomes, according to an expert.) How do the findings of this study differ materially from any other study? What new information about the Maharishi Effect have we learned by reading this summary of it? That the Maharishi Effect prefers Canada to Mexico? That the influence of Yogic Flyers in The Hague can skip over Britain, Iceland and the Atlantic Ocean to have the same effect as Yogic Flyers just a few hundred miles away? No, there isn't enough information to learn those parts of the hypothesis. There's nothing new or interesting here, as proven by the fact that no independent author has ever bothered to comment on this study.

This material can be condensed to a reasonable level. Of course there's the really short option for the entire section: "Multiple studies have shown similar effects". But we don't need to go that far either. As I proposed above, one sentence seems like the due weight for one paper out of many with unremarkable results.   Will Beback  talk  12:58, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

What we have to do is include content that means something to a reader. The Canada study needs to be succinct but must also have enough information to be accurate and informative. Condensing it is fine. Removing content that distinguishes the study and its results is not.(olive (talk) 16:35, 7 January 2010 (UTC))

Ok. I've made it more succinct. I would think if its reduced any more the entry would become meaningless.(olive (talk)`)

Thanks Olive, this looks good. I hope we are feeling fairly comfortable with the current version. It is much shorter than the original, but it still has the most relevant information--Luke Warmwater101 (talk) 17:50, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Olive seems to have merely removed one clause. That doesn't address the issues. Let me spell them out again. 1) This is a primary source. 2) It doesn't contain any new findings. 3) It's no more important that any of the t40 other studies on this effect. Let me ask again - what do readers learn from this study?   Will Beback  talk  19:47, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Olive adjusted the syntax to make the paragraph more succinct. (olive (talk) 22:56, 7 January 2010 (UTC)_

Even though everyone is trying to compromise, many do not agree with your argument that this is a primary source, and[REDACTED] does not say so. This is the only study that reports findings in relation to the Maharishi Effect in Canada and thus in that sense it is unique, and there is no[REDACTED] requirement (as far as I know) that something be radically unique before it can be included in an article. --Luke Warmwater101 (talk) 20:32, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Is there some reason to think that the results in Canada would be any different from those in other countries? We can summarize these two papers by saying that "studies have shown similar results in several countries." We can even list the countries. Is there anything else this or the other paper shows that's special?

A study that's conducted and written by the same person is a primary source. A review or discussion of that study by a writer independent of the study would be a secondary source.   Will Beback  talk  21:05, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Let's keep the study in the version it is now and forget about any more discussion on the issue. --BwB (talk) 20:50, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

(unindent) Re: primary vs secondary sources:

Because this comes from WP:MEDRS, it uses the terminology "medical" rather than "scientific" but the same definitions apply to the broader category of scientific literature, of which medical literature is a subset. Since the Maharishi Effect is being presented as scientific research, we should adhere to the definitions used in scientific sourcing.

P.S. I'm not arguing whether the study should be included or not, I'm just providing these definitions because there seems to be some confusion about what constitutes a primary vs. a secondary source. Woonpton (talk) 20:54, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

This particular study was not published in a medical journal, so Its a stretch to label it per WP:MEDRS.(olive (talk) 22:59, 7 January 2010 (UTC))

Apparently you failed to read my post, where I said that the same definitions apply to scientific literature in general, of which medical literature is only one subset. There isn't an overall Science RS guideline, probably because people editing science articles, by and large, understand the distinctions and standards for citation without needing to be told. But since a lot of people editing alternative medicine articles don't have scientific training, a guideline was developed to help those editors understand how to write articles dealing with scientific literature, hence MEDRS.

The argument that the guideline applies only to articles published in medical journals is not a useful argument. The guideline is about how to treat subjects that deal with claims of a scientific nature. It doesn't matter where the article was published; if it claims a scientific finding, the definitions of scientific citation apply, and MEDRS is a useful compilation of those definitions. At any rate, there's a category tag at the top of this page that identifies this article as belonging to category Alternative Medicine, in which case the article is not only generally but specifically covered by the guideline.Woonpton (talk) 17:27, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

This seems a tempest in a teacup. Why not leave the shortened version in place. Originally Will requested as I understand it, that the study be moved in with other studies and that it be reduced in size. That's been done. I suggest that for now, we leave it in place and then if later the article seems unwieldy, and the study superfluous we take it out.(olive (talk) 23:06, 7 January 2010 (UTC))

Olive, the matter of primary versus secondary sources was explained to you and Kbob just four months ago, and you seemed to agree then. "... a primary source is one not based upon another source, and a secondary source one based on one or more primary sources, and so on down." Studies like this are primary sources.   Will Beback  talk  23:12, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

I consider that comment to be patronizing and ignorant. I knew about primary sources long ago, Further, you consistently ignore my comments and instead continue to reframe. I have attempted to compromise between your comments and that of the other editors. You can ignore that and continue on but I don't see a resolution in your methods.(olive (talk) 23:23, 7 January 2010 (UTC))

So, do you still argue that this is a secondary source, or do we now agree that it's a primary source? The question is fundamental to solving this dispute, and others like it. Until we agree on what kind of source this is we probably can't agree on how to handle it.   Will Beback  talk  23:31, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps check the discussion. I didn't argue primary vs secondary sources. I've provided several solutions based on your initial comments. You've reframed and are now on a different track than in the very beginning of this discussion when I came into it. If you want a new discussion start a new thread and open the discussion, but please don't accuse me of contributing in a way I didn't.(olive (talk) 23:46, 7 January 2010 (UTC))

The amount of space that we devote to this depends in large part on whether it is a primary or a secondary source. You are arguing to include considerably more material on this study that I have suggested is appropriate for an obscure primary source. This issue also concerns Dillbecks' five-study paper, which takes up even more space. If we can agree that these are primary sources then we come that much closer to deciding the correct weight. Let me ask this: does anyone here think that the Canada study and studies like it are secondary sources?   Will Beback  talk  23:55, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Anyone?   Will Beback  talk  21:19, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

They are most definitely NOT secondary sources. They are clearly primary sources.Fladrif (talk) 22:55, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

• Is there any explanation for the inclusion of Yogic Flyers in The Hague in the totals required to meet the threshold? The study is careful to include the population of the U.S., but there's no mention of including the population of Holland, nor of the British Isles which lie between The Hague and Canada. That inclusion also leads to the question of whether other groups practicing Yogic Flying in other countries or continents should have been factored in to the results of every study. For example, some of Dillbeck's studies were also active in the mid-1980s. So if The Hague has an effect on Canada, why wouldn't a group in New Delhi have an effect on Manila? This seems to be among the most significant aspects of the Canada study because it is different than the standard hypothesis.   Will Beback  talk  21:19, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Per WP:Verifiable "The most reliable sources are usually peer-reviewed journals." WP:Verifiability supercedes the guidelines, WP:RS and WP:MEDRS. However the point is moot. The Canada study is simply one of the studies in a list of studies describing the state of research on the ME. The Canada study is not a primary source because its not being used as a source in this instance. WP:Verifiability notes that, "Reliable sources are needed to substantiate material within articles". The Canada study is not being used to substantiate information, or to support an opinion. It is the information and since it was published in peer review journal we might consider it significant enough for mention. The issue is how significant and how much mention. Used as a source, is the Canada study primary source, probably, but here it is not being used as a source. (olive (talk) 23:51, 8 January 2010 (UTC))

"The Canada study is not being used to substantiate information..."

I agree to mentioning it. Right now we do much more than mention it- we devote about 143 words to it. It is certainly being used as a source. To avoid that we can move it down to "further reading".   Will Beback  talk  00:12, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Its not being used as a source. We add content that says that Randi makes certain claims. Then we have to support that content with a source that substantiates that Randi actually made those claims. We aren't making claims with the Canada study . The authors "speak"within the boundaries of their study , but we are not using the study itself to support a claim. This is why primary sources can be dangerous in medical articles. If a single study is used to support a claim then there is a possibility that the study was inaccurate, poorly carried out, superseded all of that, and more. To make a claim of any kind in an article, a good secondary source is a good idea meaning that the study has been vetted again by an expert in the field so there is another layer of accountability. However, while WP:VERIFIABILITY does not say a peer reviewed study is a secondary source it does support the use of peer reviewed studies as compliant sources, and the policy trumps. There are no simple cut and dried solutions. The interconnectedness of WP:Verifiability, WP:RS and WP:MEDRS is complex.

I agree the study can be reduced as long as it has some meaningful content left , but didn't you just add more text to it... Now that's really confusing.(olive (talk) 00:40, 9 January 2010 (UTC))

Now I'm really confused. If the studies are not being used as a source for this article, then the material we have written about them is unsourced and should be removed.   Will Beback  talk  01:05, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

They are being used as content and they are defined by themselves. If I want to note the studies done on a topic ... note them and something about them then what does one do. Go to the study itself and if its peer reviewed in a reliable source indicating that it has been vetted by a community of peers then we can add it as indicative of the research in that field. As fascinating as this conversation is, I have been ill with flu today so will continue later. Thanks for you discussion.(olive (talk) 01:15, 9 January 2010 (UTC))

Since there's no evidence that independent secondary sources have paid any attention to these "other studies", I'm going to remove the descriptions and move them to "further reading". Then readers will have them available to read on their won and we won't we in a position of summarizing primary sources. (Get well soon!)   Will Beback  talk  01:35, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind wishes... Your move is against the spirit of this discussion . At the least the study should be left as a sentence, and as I advocated with enough info to make it meaningful. Too bad.(olive (talk) 01:47, 9 January 2010 (UTC))

All that's really meaningful is that these are more studies that support the overall hypothesis that the Maharishi Effect exists. Beyond something like "studies have shown similar results in several countries" there's really more we can say of interest. While they have remarkable implications, such as that ME jumps over the British Isles or prefers Canada to Mexico, we can't make those extrapolations in the text and the authors don't even seem to be aware of their own findings or assumptions. Simply reporting the size of the study or the exact parameters are just details picked out of a primary source. As for the "spirit of the discussion", this discussion has never answered why Luke added these studies, or why were devoting more than a few words to their existence. It's been an interesting discussion, but when we get back to the core Misplaced Pages policies there's no evident reason to include these papers.   Will Beback  talk  05:37, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

I gave an answer above. Here it is again. This article has a major section on the Maharishi Effect. The Maharishi Effect is a hypothesis. And it's clearly controversial. It's crucial to this article to make clear the extent of the evidence that supports this hypothesis. It's important to show the variety of journals that have published these studies and what the results were. WP:V says that peer reviewed studies are usually the most reliable source, and I would suggest that in examining this hypothesis these studies are probably a better source than magicians and political columnists and skeptics and Ig Nobel committees and unpublished demonstration projects. TimidGuy (talk) 12:05, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

We can make the extent of the evidence clear to readers by summarizing it. "Researchers connected to the movement have conducted over 40 studies in several counties, including X, Y, and Z, that have found positive effects on crime, mortality, and etc." That would cover the ground adequately, wouldn't it? By comparison to most of these studies, the activities listed under "demonstration projects" have been described in independent secondary sources.   Will Beback  talk  20:43, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

If we can include information the sort of sources that we do -- magicians, political columnists, skeptics, anticultists -- then we certainly ought to be able to information from peer-reviewed studies in independent journals. We should show the findings from each study so that the reader knows that peer reviewers of the particular independent journal found that research credible. WP:V says that peer-reviewed research is the most reliable source, and probably more reliable than sarcastic comments by political columnists and claims by anticultists not based on science. TimidGuy (talk) 12:08, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Timid, you have a way with words, and I agree: it is just not logical to think that[REDACTED] would have inferred that the comments of a journalist unfamiliar with a topic and unlikely to ever visit it again are more reliable and worthier of publication than a reputable peer reviewed journal who published a study after rigorous review. --Luke Warmwater101 (talk) 18:20, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

We include information and views that have been reported in reliable secondary sources. I don't see any lack of studies in this article already. But studies that have never been mentioned outside of the movement, and are barely even mentioned inside the movement, should not form the basis of this article.   Will Beback  talk  18:44, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Peer-reviewed studies are considered the most reliable source in Misplaced Pages, probably much more reliable than a sarcastic comment about bogus statistics by a political columnist. Who peer-reviewed that? What analysis was this comment based on? TimidGuy (talk) 12:20, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I've lost track of what we're talking about. Which political columnist are you referring to?   Will Beback  talk  21:44, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

See the beginning of the second paragraph in the Merseyside section. TimidGuy (talk) 11:55, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

We're discussing the Canada study in this thread, so a comment about the Merseyside study would be better placed in one of the threads related to it. I think that there's a confusion between primary and secondary sources. Hatchard's paper on this study is a primary source. It may be highly reliable, but it's still a primary source. The views of it expressed by a notable political commentator is sufficiently reliable, unless someone is claiming that he didn't make the reported comment. His comment is clearly presented as his opinion.   Will Beback  talk  12:08, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

The policies and guidelines uniformly value peer-reviewed studies and say that they are the most reliable. There is absolutely no comparison between a sarcastic comment in an opinion piece in a newspaper and a peer-reviewed study when it comes to presenting scientific analysis. Yet according to your reading, one is a primary source and should be restricted and the other is an acceptable secondary source. TimidGuy (talk) 12:36, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

No one has ever commented on the Canada study, sarcastically or otherwise. That's why it isn't seen as notable. If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it then do we need to devote any space to it in Misplaced Pages?   Will Beback  talk  12:47, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Let's just keep a sentence or 2 on the Canada study and be done with it. it is interesting to the reader, I believe, for 2 reasons: (1) non-US study (article tends to be US centric); and, (2) it shows the effect of a group of yogic flyers can have an effect in a different country (unique in that respect). --BwB (talk) 12:56, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Both of the points you've made could be addresses with text covering the two "other studies", something like: "Researchers connected to the movement have conducted over 40 studies in several counties, including X, Y, and Z, that have found positive effects on crime, mortality, and etc." Is there any significant finding that is missing from a sentence like that?   Will Beback  talk  17:30, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

How in the world could any studies not done independently on the ME be included? I'm surprised there is such a long discussion. ME relates to Public Health ("collective consciousness") and therefore any primary source would have to be disallowed according to WP:MEDRS. "Whenever writing about medical claims not supported by mainstream research, it is vital that third-party, independent sources be used." Also, with Fringe Theories like the Maharishi Effect, please remember WP:FRINGE warns "Coverage on Misplaced Pages should not make a fringe theory appear more notable than it actually is", yet that's exactly what's going on here. What peer-reviewed, major journal with non-TM Org affiliated reviewers have actually reviewed the ME favorably? I think it should be rather easy to narrow down the acceptable sources re: the ME, as most are filled with MIU, MUM professors, various alumni of the aforementioned, etc. and therefore could easily be removed. Am I missing something here?--Kala Bethere (talk) 20:21, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Kala, you are indeed missing something. You've missed the sentences of MEDRS that define what qualifies as independent. Also, all of the studies have been independently and favorably peer reviewed. Otherwise they wouldn't have been published. Will, don't make up rules. Yes, we need to include this study because this article is talking about a hypothesis. What would make more sense than to include studies that have been done that support the hypothesis. This study should be included and the findings briefly mentioned. Will, I invite you to address the question that I raised regarding sources and what makes the sarcastic comment a secondary source and somehow more reliable than a peer-reviewed study. TimidGuy (talk) 11:55, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't see how these studies can be seen as having been written by independent third-parties. The place of their publication doesn't transform TMM researchers into independent sources. If Barack Obama wrote a paper about his presidency and published it in the New York Times it might be a reliable source for his opinion but it wouldn't be an independent, third-party source.

Where do we discuss the hypothesis of the study? How much discussion of it can we have when there's only one sources for it, the study's author? So far as I can tell, the main point of the study is to show that the ME extends to foreign countries, and I've proposed text which would cover that. Nobody's raised any specific objections to that text, so perhaps I should just add it.

I don't know what rule I'm accused of making up. Could someone point to it?

I don't think anyone has said that Andrew Rawnsley is more or less reliable than Guy Hatchard. However Rawnsley's views are more notable than Hatchard's. Is that in dispute?   Will Beback  talk  12:13, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Will; peer-review doesn't confer independence on a primary source whose author is affiliated with the movement, and independence of the journal from the movement doesn't confer independence on the research. The authors' affiliation must be taken into account in describing the topic encyclopedically, if all the positive research comes from affiliated researchers. Woonpton (talk) 17:15, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm coming late here, but I've just read through this discussion and there's a set of assertions I simply must respond to, though belatedly: We aren't making claims with the Canada study . The authors "speak"within the boundaries of their study , but we are not using the study itself to support a claim. Its not being used as a source.

Of course it's being used as a source, and we are using it to support the claim that 1625 meditators in Fairfield Iowa were able to reduce traffic fatalities, suicide, homicide, cigarette consumption and work days lost to strikes in Canada. This is an extraordinary claim, and the only source we have to support it is this source. Woonpton (talk) 17:15, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Will, you said, "I don't see how these studies can be seen as having been written by independent third-parties." Where is the rule that says that studies must be written by independent third parties? TimidGuy (talk) 11:54, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Do we agree on the fact that they are not written by independent third parties? If we were writing about an article that was concerned more mainstream scientific ideas then the lack of independence would be less problematic. Yogic Flying and the Maharishi Effect are only studied those who believe or practice them. If no independent scientists are interested in replicating the experiments then that's an indication of the relative notability of the hypothesis. As non-notable studies performed by members of the movement they should be given minimal weight. It's perfectly adequate to summarize these sources as I've suggested, something like "Researchers connected to the movement have conducted over 40 studies in several counties, including X, Y, and Z, that have found positive effects on crime, mortality, and etc." Is any significant information from these studies missing from that formulation?   Will Beback  talk  12:48, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

I would agree, as per the list below that all mention FRINGE and Pseudoscientific theories needs to be trimmed to a sentence or two (paragraph or less) and are only refer to the primary sources, but not list them extensively. An important element of scientific review of fringe and pseudoscientific tracts is that, in general, credence is not given to them by mentioning them repeatedly and significantly, except for direct criticism. WP echoes this same sentiment in WP:FRINGE: "Ideas that are of borderline or minimal notability may be mentioned in Misplaced Pages, but should not be given undue weight. Misplaced Pages is not a forum for presenting new ideas, for countering any systemic bias in institutions such as academia, or for otherwise promoting ideas which have failed to merit attention elsewhere. Misplaced Pages is not a place to right great wrongs. Fringe theories may be excluded from articles about scientific topics when the scientific community has ignored the ideas."--Kala Bethere (talk) 14:35, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

This article talks about a hypothesis, has extensive criticism of that hypothesis, so it should also mention the results of peer-reviewed studies that support that hypothesis. You can't just arbitrarily decide that a study is non-notable based on the institutional affiliation of the author. Regarding notability, WP:FRINGE says, "One important bellwether for determining the notability and level of acceptance of fringe ideas related to science, history or other academic pursuits is the presence or absence of peer reviewed research on the subject. Kala, you're pretty far off here in regard to NPOV. Of course, my preference would be to completely exclude ME from Misplaced Pages. TimidGuy (talk) 11:24, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

There are a number of secondary sources that discuss the theory as well as the studies done to support it. A few of the studies have been reported on or mentioned in secondary sources and we give those ample space. There are other studies, apparently over 40, that haven't received any such attention. They do not make any significant assertions about the theory. Their similar findings can be grouped together to avoid giving them undue weight. I've suggested, and haven't heard any specific objection, to using a sentence that would say something like, "Researchers connected to the movement have conducted over 40 studies in several counties, including X, Y, and Z, that have found positive effects on crime, mortality, and etc." I'll fill that out and post it here to see how it looks.   Will Beback  talk  23:16, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

You haven't heard any objections? I've objected every time you've suggested that. You're welcome to add a sentence but you're not welcome to remove any material that's there. There's no policy that supports such removal. Regarding the number of studies, there are around 40 or 50 studies total, including conference presentations, Collected Papers articles, multiple studies mentioned in a single article, etc. There are about a dozen peer-reviewed articles. TimidGuy (talk) 11:42, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Let me clarify, I've never heard an objection that raised any specific issues. Let me ask again, what important information isn't included in that proposal? What makes that information, if any, important?   Will Beback  talk  20:35, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

There are a number of secondary sources that we can use. Here's a review that covers the various studies. TimidGuy (talk) 12:09, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Who's the author of that review?   Will Beback  talk  20:35, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

There's about a 5-page discussion of the Maharishi Effect research in this book: On the Nature of Consciousness. Harry T. Hunt. Yale University Press, 1995. TimidGuy (talk) 12:28, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

If we have secondary sources we should be using those in preference to primary sources. Primary sources, like these studies, should be used sparingly for things like details to provide of cases already discussed in the secondary sources.   Will Beback  talk  20:35, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

The Maharishi Effect is a hypothesis. The hypothesis is controversial. It's important to the article to show the extent to which independently peer-reviwed studies published in independent journals have published research on this hypothesis. This entails mentioning the publications where these studies have appeared and briefly what the findings were. This way the reader has a good sense for the range of publications that have published this research, the various geographic locations where it's been done, and the various specific effects. As Vassyana said on WP:FTN, reliable sources that document the claims should be used. TimidGuy (talk) 11:54, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Dillbeck's five studies

• Dillbeck, M. C., Cavanaugh, K. L., Glenn, T., Orme-Johnson, D. W., & Mittlefehldt, V. (1987). "Consciousness as a field: The Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi program and changes in social indicators." Journal of Mind and Behavior, 8(1), 67–104.

(I'm adding this here because it has similar issues to the Canada study)

In the "concept" section of the we explain that there are two ways of triggering the Maharishi Effect: training 1% of the population in TM, or having the square root of 1% of the population practicing Yogic Flying in one location. In our summary of this paper we say that another element is "a statistically significant number of people participated in a Vedic Science course and engaged in group practice of the TM-Sidhi Program". It's not clear if the training in Vedic Science and the practice of TM-Sidhi are two different things. If the same group did both and if there's isn't a hypothesis that the training is an element independent of the TM-Sidhi, then we should delete that detail. Another question about this study is the term "statistically significant". We also say about the studies in the Philippines that "...the quality of life improved significantly when a statistically significant number of people engaged in group practice of the TM-Sidhi program." Is "statistically significant" a synonym for the square root of 1%? Metro Manila had a population of almost six million in 1980, while the City of Manila's population was 1.6 million. Which population was being studied, and what is a "statistically significant" number in that context? Also, what are the years when these studies were being conducted? The imposition of martial law may result in less crime, but it would be a mistake to assume that the quality of life of life has improved. Finally, has there been any independent notice of this paper?   Will Beback  talk  20:28, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

I think part of the problem with the India study cite is that the study isn't clear itself as to what the indepedent variable is. It refers to "participants in the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi program" and says there were 3,000 of them to start with, a large group left at the end of the first month, and the numbers gradually decreased to "approximately 245" by the end of the five month program, pointing out that 245 is the square root of 1% of the territory of Delhi (6 million). It does refer in passing later to the fact that it was a Vedic science course that the participants were participating in. One supposes they all may have been participating in the TM-Sidhi program, since the square root rule was used, but that's not stated in the text. Re: your concern about martial law and other possible confounds: the study notes a possible confound in that a national security ordinance was passed just before the study began which allowed the detention of habitual criminals; however, according to the study, an analysis presented to the India Institute of Natural Law in 1981 discounted that, saying that at most 1/3 of the crime decrease could be attributed to the ordinance.

The Puerto Rico study is also vague about the independent variable, referring to "Large courses involving the group practice of the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi program" adding "In November 1982, a longer-term group arrived; this group brought the total number of Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi program participants to numbers consistently over 100 persons. Approximately 185 persons (the square root of 1%) are theoretically predicted to be required to create the extended Maharishi Effect for Puerto Rico. According to the study, the threshold of 185 was reached only during a two week period in April of 1984 when there was a large special course. "In May and June of 1984 the size of the group fluctuated quite close to the required number, between 60% and 80%..."

In the two Manila studies, the independent variable appears to be defined plainly as TM-Sidhi participants, and the Rhode Island study refers to a combination of TM-Sidhi and TM Meditation participants.

However, in the Rhode Island study it appears that the 300 TM-Sidhi participants didn't actually gather to meditate in one place: "The campaign began in Rhode Island on the 12th of June 1978 with the arrival of almost 300 teachers of the TM program who also practiced the TM-Sidhi program, who then went to cities throughout the state in teams ranging in size from 2 to 46. The visiting teachers left Rhode Island on the 12th of September." "...the square of the number of TM-Sidhi program participants in each small group, added to the number of persons already instructed in the TM technique in the state, was right at threshold for predicting the extended Maharishi Effect."

The references to "statistically significant" with respect to the number of participants do not appear in the source and should be deleted.

The studies are grouped in our account as if the Rhode Island paper was published separately from the others; that should be reworded to make clear that they are all in the same publication. Woonpton (talk) 22:32, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand the logic, in the Puerto Rico, of counting any month in which there were sufficient Yogic Flyers for a two week period as being a month that met the threshold. That's only half of the time. Is it due to the idea that there is a residual effect even when the threshold isn't met?

I've merged the paragraphs and trimmed the length. This is just one paper, which doesn't appear to have received any outside interest. I think we're still devoting too much space to these, but this is at least a bit more reasonable. We should really be using secondary sources that discuss these studies rather than choosing and writing about them on our own.   Will Beback  talk  23:46, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Maps of Maharishi Effect

• An approximation of the map in Hatchard 1996, centered on Skelmersdale
• A similar map centered on Fairfield
• Abstract version

I've prepared and uploaded these sketch maps. The first is an attempt to duplicate the map in Hatchard, which shows concentric circles centered on the location of the Yogic Flyers. The second is centered on Fairfield. Hatchard makes a point about how various circles include different populations, and therefore require different number of participants in order to meet the square root of 1% threshold. The North America map shows that to include the populations of the U.S. and Canada, it should also be necessary to include the populations of Mexico, and possibly also Central America, the Caribbean, and parts of South America. so the studies apparently disagree on the fundamental principles of the Maharishi Effect. Or, is there some element of the Maharishi Effect hypothesis that allow some populations to be excluded from the total used to calculate the threshold?   Will Beback  talk  01:11, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

I've added a third illustration, which I hope captures the concept as best we understand it. The yellow triangle is the political entity in which the TM-Sidhi group is practicing, the location of their activity marked by a star. The red square and green circle are other political entities: cities, counties, states, or nations. Since "A" (AKA Anchorage or Honolulu) is within the same entity, it is included in the outcomes, even though it is farther away than other population centers. The closest other entity is the red square, and so "B" is included in a further expansion of the populations (AKA Halifax or Vancouver). The green circle is the farthest object from the center so it is included after the triangle and square, even though it has close populations. "C" (AKA Laredo) is only included in a larger total despite being closer than "A" or "B", since the borders of its overall political entity are farthest from the center. Does this explanation seem consistent with the hypotheses of OJ, Hatchard, et al. as editors here understand them?   Will Beback  talk  11:37, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Think you're spinning your wheels here Will. We have a study on the effects of ME on the crime in Canada. Let's just stick with the Wiki policies to decide whether or not to include in the article. --BwB (talk) 11:54, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Include all views, proportionate to their weight. The studies we're citing may have contradictory assertions and we need to present all significant views to the readers. Assimakis, whose credentials are unknown, has a view of the ME that may be as significant as Orme-Johnson's, but OJ has more publications to show his significance. Hatchard's diagram is based on OJ's older work, so it is also an expression of OJ's theoretical work. However OJ may have given more than one version of the hypothesis. Maharishi has also made recorded comments on the relation of the ME to international borders. That would be another view to include.   Will Beback  talk  12:23, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Also, it'd be good to clear up the matter of how distance and border effect the ME so we can get it right in the "concept" section.   Will Beback  talk  22:02, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, though I think it's going to be difficult to clear it up because the published explanations, even from the same authors, are inconsistent and contradictory. Woonpton (talk) 00:35, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Geographical distance vs borders is discussed in OJ's reply to Schrodt, which appeared in JCR and is briefly summarized in this article. It's also discussed in the JSE paper. TimidGuy (talk) 12:08, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Are we not making mountains out of mole hills here? Will has recently reduced the Canada study section in the article to a couple of sentenses and move it to the "other" section, thus relegating it to a fairly unimportant study. --BwB (talk) 15:41, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

The issue of how distance and borders affect the Maharishi Effect field is applicable to many studies, not just the Canada study. We don't have to complete this today. TG was kind enough to send me some of OJ's papers that give his views on the topic, and I found a Maharishi video that addresses the issue too. We'll get there.   Will Beback  talk  18:04, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

In his 2009 "Reply to Critics", Orme Johnson quotes a paper published 19 years earlier:

First, in the forty studies in this area, the √1% formula has been consistently applied based on quantification of the surrounding population in terms of political units—cities, states, nations—rather than purely on geographical distance, which ignores these community boundaries (e.g., Dillbeck et al., 1987; Dillbeck et al., 1988). These political units reflect greater homogeneity, closer personal ties, more frequent interactions, and stronger internal lines of influence (cultural, emotional, and economic, as well as political) than those across boundaries and hence cannot be ignored in calculating the pattern of “spread” of predicted coherent effects on collective consciousness and behavior. . . . Our common experience with such everyday field effects as transmission of radio or television waves tells us that local conditions (including weather, the terrain, and other electromagnetic sources, such as power lines) affect patterns of transmission across large areas. The proposed intimate connection between consciousness and the unified field would support similarly uneven patterns of influence due to local boundaries in collective consciousness. (Orme-Johnson et al., 1990: 759)

In the first sentence he seems to be saying that since 40 previous studies used political boundaries to define their their study areas then the political boundaries must be significant. He then goes on to hypothesize on why boundaries might be relevant. However they doesn't seem to be any evidence that the hypothesis was ever tested. Since most statistics of the type used are compiled according to political units, it's easy to see why the studies were structured to use those units as the study areas. But those studies do not prove that the political boundaries have any significance in and of themselves. Meanwhile in 2006, Maharishi stated that if Yogic Flyers are positioned near a border the radius of their influence will "go to the other country". He does not say anything about how that influence would prefer to stay within borders containing people of "greater homogeneity, closer personal ties, more frequent interactions, and stronger internal lines of influence". So there are a couple of sources. I'll keep looking for more.   Will Beback  talk  22:10, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

During the period of study there were two large assemblies of TM-Sidhi program participants nbot held in Fairfield, Iowa but which were were of sufficient size to have a predicted influence on Canadian quality of life according to the square root of one percent figure. The first assembly was in The Hague, Holland in late December and early January 1985 (about 6500 participants). The second assembly was in Washington D.C. in July of 1985 (about 5500 participants). To include the hypothesized influence of these two large assemblies together with the Iowa group, the number of participants in each assembly was added to the as the square root of (N₁ + N₂), where N₁ is the number of participants in Fairfield and N₂ is the number of participants at the other location. This gives us a single number for a given day reflecting the combined influence of the two groups under the assumption that each groupinfluences a population proportional to the square of the group's size.

If I read this correctly, Assimakis says that the influence on the population of Canada of a group in Washington D.C. is the same as that of a group in Holland, despite the obvious difference in distances. (The Hague is about 2500 miles from the nearest part of Canada, while D.C. is less than 300 miles from the Canadian border.) And both of those are equal to the influence from Fairfield, about 500 miles away from the border.) It also follows that if the effects are additive then eight groups of 1000 would have the same effect as one group of 8000 or 80 groups of 100. Does anyone else know of a different interpretation?   Will Beback  talk  00:25, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Carla Brown's Harvard dissertation

What about also including Carla Brown's Harvard dissertation that studied the responses to the hypothesis? She conducted semi-structured, qualitative interviews with 35 people regarding how they assessed the JCR study. The interviewees included peer reviewers, newspaper reporters, Congressmen, policy analysts, activists, lobbyists, and diplomats.TimidGuy (talk) 12:24, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

I assume "also" means "in addition to giving a fair treatment to published critiques" although I'm not sure what useful information that would add. How all these people, most of them I'd guess not experts in statistics or in scientific methodology, "assessed the JCR study" would be completely irrelevant to a scientific debate, which is what we as an encyclopedia are (or should be) covering here, in the form of reliable sources. An unpublished dissertation generally isn't considered a reliable source for scientific or scholarly information; it's even more primary than most of the sources we're using. Woonpton (talk) 14:26, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

The last discussion I saw on the reliable sources noticeboard, for those who think their input is valuable, was that doctoral dissertations may qualify as reliable sources, but need to be used with caution. (However, I don't think that dissertations by students of MUM and MERU should be included as they lack independence.) Brown's dissertation is copied incompletely on one of David Leffer's websites. Brown concludes that, out of a 35-person Middle East policy network, only one person (a lobbyist) believed the results of the study. I think this dissertation has a significant point of view and it should be mentioned also, but without giving it undue weight. A sentence should be able to cover it adequately.   Will Beback  talk  18:25, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

All right, I withdraw the objection, as long as the source isn't used to establish a scientific finding but simply to summarize a sampling of opinion, and I agree, a sentence should do it. Woonpton (talk) 18:39, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Good compromise folks, thanks. --BwB (talk) 21:58, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Proposed text:

• Carla Brown, a graduate of Maharishi University of Management, wrote her doctoral dissertation for the Graduate School of Education of Harvard University on the reception of the study among 35 peer reviewers, newspaper reporters, Congresspeople, non-governmental policy analysts, activists, lobbyists, and members of the U.S. diplomatic community. Of those, most were "unprepared for the description of reality" in the study and only one, a lobbyist, said she believed the results of the study.

It's actually two sentences, one for the nature of the thesis and the other for the conclusion.   Will Beback  talk  22:39, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Seems fine to me, Will.(olive (talk) 02:13, 3 January 2010 (UTC))

Nice! --BwB (talk) 10:32, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Will, but I'm not sure that accurately represents the finding. I believe that a major finding of the study was that the majority of those interviewed responded emotionally rather than objectively. TimidGuy (talk) 12:47, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry to say I looked at this quickly when tired and didn't look far enough. TG is right. The study and its findings are more complex than we are saying here, so I'd like to look further today and see if we can add more accuracy to Will's sentences. I'm adding here the part of the study which suggests applications of the study findings because it gives a sense of the study's range. (olive (talk) 14:00, 3 January 2010 (UTC))

In observing the ways in which members of the foreign policy network assessed International Peace Project in the Middle East, I found that a small subset followed scientific evidence where it led or at least considered it and gave it as much or more weight than their own predilections. Another larger subset gave greater weight to their own values: within the imposing constraints of their jobs and overwhelming amounts of information, they found the study profoundly out of place with the hard realities of conflict and with the political realities of the Middle East as they defined them. In observing the contrast between those who were more likely to consider the IPPME research in the future and those who were not, I found a structure of concerns that was more than a collection of individual filtering mechanisms. This community-wide net of tacit assumptions was highly articulated and actively used. Most respondents identified with them fully, while some few acknowledged these assumptions but easily put them aside when confronting new and unusual scientific findings.

Nope. I reluctantly agreed to citing this as long as the source isn't used to establish a scientific finding but simply to summarize a sampling of opinion, and I agree, a sentence should do it. The source should not be used to establish a "major finding," or any finding, for that matter. The rule in the world of scientific research is that if a dissertation has merit, it will be published. If it hasn't been published, it doesn't exist. I'm aware that Misplaced Pages rules in some cases are more lenient than academic rules, but as support for a finding, for analysis, I don't see support in policy for using an unpublished dissertation as a source.

When I withdrew my objection above, I was taking Will's word for the discussions on the RS noticeboard, but have now read those discussions carefully. Yes, people seemed to say in general that dissertations and theses can be used with caution on a case by case basis, but when it came to the specific source at hand in the examples he links to, the dissertation was removed from the article as a result of the noticeboard discussion.Woonpton (talk) 17:32, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm fine with it being shorter, just has to be more accurate.(olive (talk) 18:01, 3 January 2010 (UTC))

You seem to have missed my point. My objection isn't to length, but to the use of the source to back up a finding or analysis; an unpublished dissertation isn't a reliable source for that. Woonpton (talk) 18:17, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't see a discussion of emotion in the conclusions. The main issues that seem to appear are concerns about the legitimacy of the theory or study, and its relevance to the work of the individual network members, and how those contribute to the filtering out of unconventional ideas. The issue of filtering is covered by the second sentence. I suppose we could add a few words on how the respondents also thought it was not relevant to their work.

However before we get into wordsmithing perhaps we should first agree on whether this is a suitable source at all. Do we need to go to the WP:RSN, and if we did would it make any difference to the discussion here?   Will Beback  talk  20:33, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

As an unpublished dissertation, inclusion of the study is definitely debatable. I do see the use of the study as an interesting addendum to the studies on the ME since it does give possible glimpses into how and why a novel idea/study/science may be seen as it is. As an aside, I wonder why this study was never published. Good graduate schools such as Harvard are probably not in the habit of accepting dissertations that are too weak for publication.(olive (talk) 21:13, 3 January 2010 (UTC))

Okay, I've gone through the conclusions about ten times, and I don't have any trouble finding the statement Will cited (accurately, I might add), although I'd also include the statement that none of the 35 respondents was convinced that the Maharishi research indicates "a solution to Middle East conflict;" this is an important observation about a group of Middle-East scholars and policy makers. But search as I may, I can't find the passage olive cited. And I agree with Will that there's no discussion of emotion in the conclusions. I stand by my position that the source is not adequate to cite findings; if it is publication-worthy it will be published, and at that point it will qualify for citation. If it goes to the RS noticeboard and comes back with a different answer, I'll respect the consensus at the noticeboard, but after participating in two requests at noticeboards where the response from uninvolved editors was ignored by editors here, I'm not sure why we bother. If we only respect the noticeboard if it comes out the way we want it, then it's not much help to us as a community of supposedly collaborating editors. Woonpton (talk) 23:38, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

I didn't cite a passage, Woonpton, I was referring to the study as a whole and somewhat more specifically to "Contribution of These Findings to the Field of Sociology of Knowledge Application"(olive (talk) 02:35, 4 January 2010 (UTC))

Oh, sorry, the blockquote was posted just below your post and there was no signature, so I assumed it was an addendum to your post. But looking at the page history I see it was posted by TimidGuy. Excuse the confusion, but TimidGuy really should sign his contributions. Though I (understandably, I might say) misattributed who posted the passage, my comment with respect to it is the same. Woonpton (talk) 03:23, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry Woonpton. I didn't realize what you were referring to. I thought you were referring to my post. I did post the passage above and it came from "Contribution of These Findings to the Field of Sociology of Knowledge Application"... (olive (talk) 03:37, 4 January 2010 (UTC))

While I know nothing of this particular dissertation, I did once look up the dissertation they cite as the flower of the Vedic Mathematics curriculum at MUM. It seemed to me of high school quality and certainly did not justify the praise MUM gave it on their website. This also explained to me why MUM made it so difficult to find. As a long-time TM practitioner, I understand the unification of education based on the Science of Creative Intelligence. I understand that MUM provides a really good education for the whole person. However, I believe that, with few exceptions, the only people praising the actual intellectual contributions of MUM to Academia is MUM itself. It makes no sense to generalize that dissertations are acceptable or not acceptable as WP citations, since there are good and bad dissertations, and we have no mechanism (other than publication and citations in subsequent papers) for evaluating them. My inclination would be to agree with Olive and Woonpton to disallow this citation. David spector (talk) 00:36, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm unclear as to how this discussion veered into an attack on MUM. Since the writer of the dissertation we are reviewing graduated from MU and was accepted into the PHD program at one of the best schools in the US, we can probably safely say her education and accomplishments at MUM were comparable to other students in Harvard's Phd programs.

I am not suggesting we disallow the dissertation out right, I am suggesting it makes an interesting addendum to the sourced studies.

Perhaps we could clarify the use of Notice boards. For example, the WP:CONTENT notice board says," This noticeboard is for discussions and advice pertaining to encyclopedic content and associated issues." Consensus on what goes into an article is gained by consensus on the article discussion page not on a noticeboard. Notice boards supply a place for input from outside editors, opinions. advice, sometimes discussion, but notice board input is not binding.

I really think its time that allegations that Notice board input has been ignored by some editors here stops. That simply isn't true. (olive (talk) 01:51, 4 January 2010 (UTC))

FWIW, it may be worth pointing out that the topic of the dissertation isn't the Middle East study, it's how policy makers view creative solutions. It simply uses the OJ study as an example of such a creative solution. Therefore the main findings are irrelevant to this article. The only relevant findings are those that are relatively ancillary to the dissertation, those that concern the study itself.   Will Beback  talk  04:45, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

1. Journal of Conflict Resolution 34:745-755
2. Assimakis, P. D., & Dillbeck, M. C. (1995). Time series analysis of improved quality of life in Canada: Social change, collective consciousness, and the TM-Sidhi program. Psychological Reports, 76, 1177.
3. Assimakis, P. D.; Dillbeck, M. C. (1995). "Time series analysis of improved quality of life in Canada: Social change, collective consciousness, and the TM-Sidhi program.". Psychological Reports 76: 1171–1193.
4. "Carla Brown's Experience". LinkedIn. Retrieved January 2, 2010.
5. Brown, Carla Linton (1996). Observing the Assessment of Research Information by Peer Reviewers, Newspaper Reporters, and Potential Governmental and Non-Governmental Users: International Peace Project in the Middle East (PDF) (Doctor of Education thesis). Harvard University. OCLC 36504138. Retrieved January 2, 2010. {{cite thesis}}: More than one of |author= and |last= specified (help)

"Concept"

• In 1960, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi predicted that one percent of a population practicing the Transcendental Meditation technique would produce measurable improvements in the quality of life for the whole population. This phenomenon was first noticed in 1974 and reported in a paper published in 1976. Here, the finding was that when 1% of a community practiced the Transcendental Meditation® program, then the crime rate was reduced by 16% on average. At this time, the phenomenon was named Maharishi Effect. The meaning of this term was later extended to cover the influence generated by the group practice of the TM-Sidhi® program. Maharishi introduced the TM-Sidhi program, including Yogic Flying, in 1976.

• In 1960, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi predicted that if one percent of the population practiced Transcendental Meditation, the quality of life for the entire population would be affected. In 1976, a study by researchers associated with Maharishi University of Management described, an on-average reduction in crime of 16% in communities where 1% of the population was practicing the TM technique. Following the Maharishi's introduction of the TM-Sidhi Program, it was hypothesized that exponential effects would be experienced from group practice of Yogic Flying.

It's good to have this type of history in the article. But is an anonymous page on the MUM website the best source we can find for these assertions? Do we know more about the 1976 study, the 1974 first notice, or the 1960 prediction?   Will Beback  talk  10:17, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

I noticed the other day that Hagelin's 1987 paper gives this information. Speaking of which, we have extensive criticism of Hagelin's theory but I don't think we ever give a summary of what he said in the two papers in which he presented it. TimidGuy (talk) 12:03, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Good point Timid. Let's put in some text about what Hagelin presents ion these 2 papers. --BwB (talk) 15:30, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

What are the titles of these papers?   Will Beback  talk  20:53, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

For reference, the papers in question are:

• "Is consciousness the unified field? A field theorist’s perspective", Modern Science and Vedic Science 1, 1987, pp 29-87
• "Restructuring physics from its foundation in light of Maharishi’s Vedic Science", Modern Science and Vedic Science 3, 1989, pp 3-72

Both are published by an MUM journal. They'd certainly be better sources than the anonymous MUM webpage.   Will Beback  talk  00:25, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Barrett

Which edition is this? The ref apparently gives a date of 2001, but also says the second edition, which according to Amazon was 2003. Thanks. TimidGuy (talk) 12:00, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

It doesn't call itself the 2nd edition, so maybe that's misleading. The first edition had a slightly different name. The inside flap of the 2001 edition calls it a "much expanded, revised and fully updated version" of the earlier volume.  Will Beback  talk  19:07, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

So should I get the 2001 or 2003 edition? Which is this from? TimidGuy (talk) 11:51, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

The edition I cited is dated 2001.   Will Beback  talk  11:58, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Fringe Theories and Posting on TM-related articles

It might be helpful to post a couple of reminders, reworded for relevance here:

Quotes are from WP:FRINGE

"We use the term fringe theory in a very broad sense to describe ideas that depart significantly from the prevailing or mainstream view in its particular field of study."

IOW, highly speculative, unconfirmed theories of physics or the effect of meditation, or prayer at a distance on the physical world fit this definition of "Fringe".

Some common TM Org Fringe ideas:

- Pure Consciousness

- a connection between consciousness, the pure consciousness and events in the physical world (crime, war, etc.)

- quantum physics and the paranormal (e.g. "I'm creating world peace with my pure consciousness and quantum physics explains how")

- The "Maharishi Effect"

etc.

"Coverage on Misplaced Pages should not make a fringe theory appear more notable than it actually is."

IOW, don't post a lot of primary sourced fringe science and expect it to be accepted simply because it's something you believe in or happen to revolve your life around. Without mainstream acceptance, it probably only bares the slightest mention: not a paragraph, not an article, not a section or several sections: just a simple mention. This would likely include lengthy diatribes on fringe science research. As "it is important that Misplaced Pages itself does not become the validating source for non-significant subjects".

"We use the term fringe theory in a very broad sense to describe ideas that depart significantly from the prevailing or mainstream view in its particular field of study." (emphasis, mine)

"For example, the Book of Genesis itself should be primarily covered as a work of ancient literature, as part of the Hebrew or Christian Bible, or for its theological significance, rather than as a cosmological theory."

IOW, the Vedas, the Patanjali Sutras or some Eastern religious text may make all sorts of claims about peace from meditation, but they should be covered as works of ancient literature and for their theological significance rather than as a theory involving cosmology or modern physics.--Kala Bethere (talk) 22:00, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I believe you are correct that WP:FRINGE applies here. Other parts of that page which should be read carefully are WP:FRINGE#A note about publication, WP:FRINGE#Independent sources, and WP:FRINGE#Particular attribution.   Will Beback  talk  22:19, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

edit conflict

• Peer review in a reliable publication is the threshold for inclusion per Misplaced Pages.

• Studies on the ME are integral to this article because they define the subject /topic of the article. Claims if supported by reliable, verifiable sources can be included if they fairly represent "all majority and significant-minority viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in rough proportion to the prominence of each view. Tiny-minority views and fringe theories need not be included, except in articles devoted to them."

Per core content policies:

per WP:Verifiable "The most reliable sources are usually peer-reviewed journals;..."

per WP:NOR "In general the most reliable sources are peer-reviewed journals ..."

From WP: Verifiability. "The threshold for inclusion in Misplaced Pages is verifiability, not truth—that is, whether readers are able to check that material added to Misplaced Pages has already been published by a reliable source, not whether we think it is true." (olive (talk) 22:36, 13 January 2010 (UTC))

The role of Misplaced Pages is not to give validation to fringe views.

• "Coverage on Misplaced Pages should not make a fringe theory appear more notable than it actually is. Since Misplaced Pages describes significant opinions in its articles, with representation in proportion to their prominence, it is important that Misplaced Pages itself does not become the validating source for non-significant subjects."
• "Articles which cover controversial, disputed, or discounted ideas in detail should document (with reliable sources) the current level of their acceptance among the relevant academic community."
• "Peer review is an important feature of reliable sources that discuss scientific, historical or other academic ideas, but it is not the same as acceptance. It is important that original hypotheses that have gone through peer review do not get presented in Misplaced Pages as representing scientific consensus or fact."

Those don't say that we can't mention the views of the movement, but it does provide guidelines on how to do so.  Will Beback  talk  22:49, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

So far this topic has not been defined as a fringe view except as editor opinion and if it is a fringe view, then "fringe theories need not be included, except in articles devoted to them." (olive (talk) 23:02, 13 January 2010 (UTC))

And to add: We are not presenting the views of the movement. In adding the studies on the ME effect we are simply adding peer reviewed studies.(olive (talk) 23:05, 13 January 2010 (UTC))

I agree that we can mention these hypotheses in this article. The hypotheses contained in the studies are the views of the movement. No one outside the movement has espoused them, and only members of the movement have conducted studies of them. Is there any doubt that the hypotheses of Yogic Flying and the Maharishi Effect are accepted by the mainstream scientific community? We could ask at the noticeboard to see what the Misplaced Pages community thinks.   Will Beback  talk  23:26, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

The hypotheses and conclusions of a study are not considered "views" per say, but aspects within the bounds of a study.

I'm afraid the application of this discussion escapes me. We have an article on the TM Sidhi program. An integral aspect of that program is the research that's been done on the effect. That's it. If we need to choose the best of those studies fine. If we need to decide weight , fine. But to discuss actually using the studies, the logic, per an encyclopedia article in which those studies are an an integral part of the description of the topic of the article escapes me.(olive (talk) 00:00, 14 January 2010 (UTC))

That would be interesting.

Current theories/hypothesis, etc. should be reduced to a sentence or two. A single footnote with a couple of citations would seem to be the max if I read . I would hope to render Fringe ideas per WP policy. Since Fringe does apply, should an inserted comment assert that in the entry? At least to maintain a factual rejoinder and to keep that reminder in the main entry. Something like "fringe views such as <name>, per WP policy are not encouraged or elaborated upon" or some such statement. Keep it quite short and lend no credence, but bear no malfeasance either.

Are there certain guidelines for massively editing articles when circumstances like these arise?--Kala Bethere (talk) 00:07, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

You can't add that kind of comment unless its sourced Kala, and ". Something like "fringe views such as <name>, per WP policy are not encouraged or elaborated upon" or some such statement." is not what the policy says and is not encyclopedic. There will be no massive edit of this article based on any editor's opinions. And be sure that any contentious edits are discussed and agreed upon before thy are added to the article. (olive (talk) 00:28, 14 January 2010 (UTC))

Can you show me the discussion that preceded the addition of the contentious "other studies" to the article? I don't recall there being any.   Will Beback  talk  08:36, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure I entirely understand what's being proposed here. I think it's a good thing for editors to be reminded that WP:Fringe and the arbitration on fringe science from last year apply to this article. For example this principle that was passed in the arbitration:

Misplaced Pages is an encyclopedia and its content on scientific and quasi-scientific topics will primarily reflect current mainstream scientific consensus.

Those principles should guide how we edit the article, since the Maharishi Effect is claimed to be a scientific finding. But at the same time, I would be against posting some kind of reminder about that on the article talk page. Who would decide how to word it? Let's just point to the policies and guidelines and principles and allow people to read them for themselves and decide how they will guide their editing, rather than trying to codify exactly how WP: FRINGE should apply to this article. (And btw, there's no Misplaced Pages body that needs to define the topic as fringe before we consider it fringe; it's fringe by nature, as it's not a theory/finding that's accepted by mainstream science.) Woonpton (talk) 01:16, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

One thing seems clear: "Coverage on Misplaced Pages should not make a fringe theory appear more notable than it actually is." And the current article(s) already sound like lengthy advertisements. The line appears to have been crossed re: what the WP calls "unwarranted promotion of fringe theories". Furthermore "one may not be able to write about a fringe theory in a neutral manner if there are no independent secondary sources of reasonable reliability and quality about it." Since there are few secondary sources and way too many primary sources, basically primary sources have to be nixed to comply with WP:FRNG. "While fringe theory proponents are excellent sources for describing what they believe, the best sources to use when determining the notability and prominence of fringe theories are independent sources." So clearly there's a lot of material, esp. fringe primary papers, even if from peer reviewed journals, which would have to be excluded: "Peer review (...) is not the same as acceptance." and "exceptional claims in Misplaced Pages require high-quality reliable sources, and, with clear editorial consensus, unreliable sources for exceptional claims may be rejected due to a lack of quality (see WP:REDFLAG)."

One easy way to proceed is to simply compile a list of all source papers, and highlight eliminate and the primary sources.--Kala Bethere (talk) 13:27, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Will, can you show me the discussion that preceded any of the content that Fladrif added to the article? These are peer-reviewed studies. All of the Misplaced Pages policies and guidelines highly value peer reviewed studies as the most reliable source. There is no policy or guideline that disallows their use. You can't censor this material. It's out there in the scientific literature. You're free to present balancing points of view. But you can't just eliminate what you don't like. That's not the way Misplaced Pages works. Fine, find sources that represent the current mainstream consensus and put that in the article. Or as an alternative, we can delete everything related to the Maharishi Effect. That would be my preference. But if we're going to include it, there is no valid argument for disallowing inclusion of the research that supports it. TimidGuy (talk) 12:08, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure of the right way to proceed with this article. But I think we can all agree that Yogic Flying and the Maharishi Effect are not part of the current mainstream scientific consensus. Does any here argue otherwise?   Will Beback  talk  12:20, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

TimidGuy please keep in mind while peer review is great for independent, high quality sources, it's not enough for poor quality, primary, fringe papers. Peer review is not the same as acceptance. So in order to comply with WP:FRNG much if not most of the primary papers would have to go. Since fringe theories are not to receive prominence, length should be brief. "limiting that relative perspective to a restricted subset of specialists or only amongst the proponents of that view is, necessarily, biased and unrepresentative."

Perhaps someone could also independently verify whether the DIllbecks are currently major financial stakeholders, as has been rumored, in the TM Org. That financial link would be troubling as well in regards to inclusions of papers they were involved with.--Kala Bethere (talk) 13:37, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Could you give more detail? Since there's no entity called TM Org it's impossible to see who has a financial stake in it. There are contributors to various entities, there are employees of those entities, there are investors in RAAM bonds, etc. So far as I now, Dillbeck has been a professor at MUM.   Will Beback  talk  00:09, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

It's recently been stated there has been a change in the MUM community and in Fairfield regarding who holds the reigns of power originally held by Bevan Morris, and it was hinted that this role now went to the Dillbeck's as a couple. This rumor has not been confirmed and is still just that: a rumor. Since many here are clearly closely affiliated with the movement, I was hoping for a comment from insiders rather than silence!

However most of these people listed in the primary fringe studies are employees or involved in some aspect of the TM Org (which covers a huge number of differently named sub-orgs). For example, the Dillbeck's have been affiliated with MUM.edu and both may be TM teachers.--Kala Bethere (talk) 15:16, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't think there's any question that Dillbeck is an employee of MUM. If he holds any special titles that might indicate his seniority.   Will Beback  talk  20:20, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

• The organization cites studies that it says found that large groups of yogic fliers helped temporarily lower crime in Washington, D.C., end the cold war and briefly reduce hostilities in the Middle East. “To the best of my knowledge, it has never been studied truly independently,” said Dr. Herbert Benson, director emeritus of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, and a TM practitioner himself. “It’s been hypothesized for many years, but never proven.”
  • SEAN D. HAMILL, "Sites for ‘Maharishi Effect’ (Welcome to Parma) Spread Across U.S." February 22, 2008 New York Times

So there's an opinion that none of the studies are truly independent.   Will Beback  talk  00:09, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

I would think uch an opinion can be added to the article if the source is considered reliable. (olive (talk) 00:14, 15 January 2010 (UTC))

Is there any reason to doubt the reliability of the New York Times?

The question here isn't which views to include in the article - it's about whether WP:FRINGE applies to Yogic Flying and the Maharishi Effect. If those have never been tested independently then that's a factor.   Will Beback  talk  00:22, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

• It doesn't look like the active editors here are going to come to agreement over whether to apply WP:FRINGE to this article. So I've posted a question at Misplaced Pages:Fringe theories/Noticeboard#Yogic Flying and the Maharishi Effect to get outside views.   Will Beback  talk  23:25, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

What Context?

After a little edit war on the TM Movement article after which the suggestion was made to pummel poor unsuspecting plushies, this change has been made here. This latest edit would appear to be inconsistent with the resolution of that issue there. Now, for the first time, someone is attempting to connect McTaggert's opinion on the Maharishi Effect research with criticism of the TM Movement for promoting the Maharishi's personal interests. As I wrote earlier, I do not have the benefit of having book in front of me, but I have taken the prior characterizations of the statements in McTaggert's book to have been made in good faith and accurate. This latest edit gives me pause. I no longer have any confidence as to what McTaggert's text actually says given the discrepancy in how it has been summarized formerly and how it is being summarized now. Until we can verify that this statement is accurate, it needs to stay out of the article. The burden in on the editors proposing to included this language to justify it. Absent seeing the text, it strikes me as illogical for the two statements to be connected, but I am perfectly willing to be convinced otherwise. Fladrif (talk) 18:07, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm not going to repeat the exchange between Will, BWB and myself on the TM Movement Talk Page. Unless McTaggert wrote something very different from how all the prior versions summarized it, this matter should be regarded as closed. The link is above in my prior post. Fladrif (talk) 18:14, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

I am not aware of any consensus to remove context. Since you do not have a source I suggest your reverts are somewhat hasty. The source is here:

This is a double sided comment. Leaving out either side is to create a POV statement. As editors we don't have the luxury of reframing an author's comments to suit an article(olive (talk) 18:20, 14 January 2010 (UTC))

This is your idea of de-escalating? Did you even bother to read the talk page discussion on this issue? Or is this another example of WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT? McTagggert's makes two statements, though she combines them in a single sentence: (i) the TM Movement had been ridiculed, largely for promoting the Maharishi's personal interests; (ii) she finds the Maharishi Effect research compelling. Neither has anything to do with one-another, and insisting that they have to go in these articles together is a complete misinterpretation of NPOV and a misunderstanding of what an editor is supposed to do. Fladrif (talk) 18:28, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Fladrif I attempted to place material in both the articles that would fairly represent the source with out leaving out context. Having another editor come in and revert an edit outright who did not even have the source is hand is not particularly collaborative, however, I'm sure you'll bash me whatever I say.(olive (talk) 19:26, 14 January 2010 (UTC))

No, I'm not going to bash you, but I am going to be critical of the edit. I have proceeded throughout assuming that the editors who did have the source in-hand accurately reflected what McTaggert wrote, and now that I have read it (thank you for the link), they clearly did reflect it accurately. But the point that was first made by Will, and which I support 100%, and to which BWB agreed reluctantly is that she is writing about two completely different things, each relevant to different articles and irrelevant in the other. We don't put irrelevant material in articles; doing so adds neither context nor balance. Fladrif (talk) 20:10, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Over 3 Reverts

I'd just like to point out I believe you are at over 3 reverts for this entry Little Olive Oil. Please stop this edit warring Little Olive Oil.

I believe if this is the first time, there should be a 24 hour block.

Is this your first time Little Olive Oil?

How do we proceed?--Kala Bethere (talk) 19:14, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

The matter has been reported on the appropriate noticeboard. Everyone should stop editing warring.   Will Beback  talk  00:27, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

List of Current Refs which Violate WP:FRINGE

A list of current scientific papers which violate the WP:FRINGE in the entry TM-Sidhi Program

Some guidelines in removal and editing from WP: FRINGE (emphases, mine)

"Proponents of fringe theories have in the past used Misplaced Pages as a forum for promoting their ideas. Existing policies discourage this type of behavior: if the only statements about a fringe theory come from the inventors or promoters of that theory, then various "What Misplaced Pages is not" rules come into play. Misplaced Pages is neither a publisher of original thought nor a soapbox for self-promotion and advertising."

Independent sources

"While fringe theory proponents are excellent sources for describing what they believe, the best sources to use when determining the notability and prominence of fringe theories are independent sources. In particular, the relative space that an article devotes to different aspects of a fringe theory should follow from consideration primarily of the independent sources. If independent sources only comment on the major points of a fringe theory, an article that devotes the majority of its space to minor points that independent sources do not cover in detail may be unbalanced. "

"Peer review is an important feature of reliable sources that discuss scientific, historical or other academic ideas, but it is not the same as acceptance."

Ideas that are of borderline or minimal notability may be mentioned in Misplaced Pages, but should not be given undue weight. Misplaced Pages is not a forum for presenting new ideas, for countering any systemic bias in institutions such as academia, or for otherwise promoting ideas which have failed to merit attention elsewhere. Misplaced Pages is not a place to right great wrongs. Fringe theories may be excluded from articles about scientific topics when the scientific community has ignored the ideas.

"Note that fringe journals exist, some of which claim peer review. Only a very few of these actually have any meaningful peer review outside of promoters of the fringe theories, and should generally be considered unreliable.

Papers are listed by relative appearance in the entry. May not include all non-compliant citations. "Other" non-compliant magazine articles, etc. to be listed separately.

Discussion #1

Should I include Conflict of Interest in the "Reasons/Other" column?--Kala Bethere (talk) 13:01, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Please add new material above the reference section so it does not get lost. --BwB (talk) 12:57, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

I was in the process of moving it when you so hypervigilantly did so. The article had just be added seconds before. Editing does take time and is not always instantaneous. Please try to exercise patience with new edits.--Kala Bethere (talk) 13:01, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

The following independent journals have been used as sources and do not violate fringe:

• International Journal of Neuroscience
• Experimental Neurology
• Psychosomatic Medicine
• Psychology, Crime and Law
• Journal of Conflict Resolution
• Social Indicators Research
• Journal of Mind and Behavior
• Psychological Reports

Since the guideline emphasizes independent sources, we should probably add more of the studies that have been published in peer-reviewed journals. Of course, I'd very much like to see some of the self-published sources deleted from the article, such as Global Good News and the press releases. Why were these added? TimidGuy (talk) 11:53, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for providing the list TG. I agree with you that the references form GGN and the press releases are weak and could be removed, or replaced with stronger ref if they exist. --BwB (talk) 12:01, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

I was just looking at Google Scholar. There's quite a lot of additional research on the TM-Sidhi program in independent journals that could be added. Most of this has to do with its being a meditative technique — which wouldn't be considered fringe, I would think. I suggest we remove the self-published sources and add more research from independent journals. There's actually more peer-reviwed research on the TM-Sidhi program than on the Maharishi Effect. This article is a bit out of balance. TimidGuy (talk) 12:15, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Are any of those studies conducted by people unaffiliated with the TMM?   Will Beback  talk  23:03, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

No. Is there any policy or guideline that defines independence the way that you are? TimidGuy (talk) 11:44, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

If they are employed at MUM or another Maharishi University then they aren't independent. Do you need a specific policy to make that clear?   Will Beback  talk  19:12, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I'd like you to cite a policy or guideline that uses "independent" in the sense that you are. They are affiliated researchers who have published in independently reviewed, independent third-party journals. Misplaced Pages doesn't disallow inclusion of these published studies. TimidGuy (talk) 12:11, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

MUM is a trademarked name owned by MVEDC/MF. What are the authors supposed to be independent of if they all work at MUM?   Will Beback  talk  12:30, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Timid Guy, I notice you did not list the authors in your above list of alleged "independent" journals. The topic is still a fringe topic, so per WP:FRINGE we need to know the sources are independent. In such a case where where it is unclear whether or not the authors may or may not be affiliated with MIU/TMO/TM teaching/TM practice. etc. or other types of bias, the article should have a clear declaration of Financial Disclosure and a Funding/Support disclosure that clearly indicates non-involvement, otherwise it wouldn't make re: WP:FRINGE I'm afraid.

Since TM research history has two detailed independent studies framing it's history, in 1983 reviewing early TM attempts and investigation and a more recent one c. 2006, I propose for the sake of conciseness (and brevity, the article is already too long), we simply use these and let it go at that. Trying to pad the article will lots and lots of articles shouldn't eb the goal, but to simply use the two major reviews would be sufficient and concise.

Since WP policy suggest limiting mention of such Fringe claims, we need to keep it brief. It may be helpful to simply start a Fringe or Pseudoscience sub-section in each TM entry, and move the brief, worthy independent reviews there and delete the mostly non-compliant research sections wholesale.--Kala Bethere (talk) 14:22, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Comments to this section

Added comment section to make editing easier here. --BwB (talk) 13:24, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Firstly, article subject (TM-Sidhi program) is a meditation course not a theory. Secondly, WP:Fringe says that the policy in a nutshell is: "In order to be notable enough to appear in Misplaced Pages, an idea should be referenced extensively, and in a serious manner, in at least one major publication, or by a notable group or individual that is independent of the theory." And the TM-Sidhi program has been discussed in scores of major newspapers. So there is absolutely nothing fringe about it. If by chance you are talking about the Maharishi Effect. It is a scientific theory with published research and also been discussed in many major publications. So it also does appear to qualify as fringe in any way.-- — Kbob • Talk • 18:11, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Yogic Flying and the Maharishi Effect are both theories. Being published in peer-reviewed journals or discussed in lay publications does not mean that the theories have been accepted. I don't see anyone arguing that these theories are within the mainstream scientific consensus.   Will Beback  talk  20:13, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

There's an error in the chart. Not all of the authors of the 1999 study are affiliated. And you're redefining what the guideline means by "independent sources." The peer-reviewed studies have been published in independent sources. TimidGuy (talk) 11:35, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

If a study is conducted by members of the movement then it is not an independent study, regardless of where it's published.

• Hagelin, John S.; Maxwell V. Rainforth, Kenneth L. C. Cavanaugh, Charles N. Alexander, Susan F. Shatkin, John L. Davies, Anne O. Hughes, Emanuel Ross, David W. Orme-Johnson

The lead author of the 1999 study is the head of the movement in the US. Of the nine authors, I recognize five as being members of the movement, including the first four. Since authors are usually listed in order of the importance of their contributions, it seems to have been conducted chiefly by members of the movement. I recall reading about the participation of a police official, who ended up disputing the study's conclusions.   Will Beback  talk  22:22, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Will, I'm sorry I wasn't clear. I was making two different points. The first I've now corrected in the chart. The second point was about the chart's usage of "independent." It doesn't follow the usage of that word in the guidelines. Both MEDRS and FRINGE use it in the sense of third-party source. TimidGuy (talk) 11:57, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Papers written by Hagelin, Orme-Johnson, Rainforth, Cavanaugh, Wallace, Alexander, Hatchard, Assimakis, Dillbeck, or Travis are not third-party sources.   Will Beback  talk  19:39, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

The references in question do not violate WP:FRINGE, they do at best violate WP:SPS. It is fair enough to quote self-published sources, as long as

1. they are not used to establish notability
2. they are not used to reference claims made in Misplaced Pages's voice.

This article needs to base its assessment of the "TM-Sidhi program" on independent third-party sources. Once this is done, self-published sources may also be consulted, within WP:DUE. --dab (𒁳) 14:15, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Lotus position

The lede has been changed to state that Yogic Flying is done in lotus position. I think this is misleading as I do not believe it is necessary to be in the lotus position to practice the technique. Perhaps it could be reworded without changing the meaning of the sentence? --BwB (talk) 17:10, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

I've seen several videos and written descriptions of Yogic Flying. All of them have people in the lotus position. Is there even a single counter-example of anyone flying//hopping from another position?   Will Beback  talk  19:23, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

• The first of three stages of yogic flying is yogic hopping - sitting in the lotus position and bouncing on springy mats.
  • "I want to teach the world to meditate" Richard Wilson. Sunday Times. London (UK): Mar 16, 2008. pg. 10
• Though the movement is admired for its finances, many independent critics question its belief that large groups of people meditating or practicing yogic flying -- where people meditate and hop while sitting cross-legged in the lotus position -- can spread peace.
  • "Sites for 'Maharishi Effect' (Welcome to Parma) Spread Across U.S." Sean D. Hamill. New York Times. (Late Edition (East Coast)). New York, N.Y.: Feb 22, 2008. pg. A.14
• Over the years, Maharishi also was accused of fraud by former pupils who claim he failed to teach them to fly. "Yogic flying," showcased as the ultimate level of transcendence, was never witnessed as anything more than TM followers sitting in the cross-legged lotus position and bouncing across spongy mats.
  • "Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Beatles' guru, dies" MIKE CORDER. Bennington Banner. Bennington, Vt.: Feb 8, 2008.
• The Maharishi, pictured, set up universities and schools all over the world and his Natural Law Party -- which promotes yogic flying, a practice that involves sitting in the lotus position and bouncing into the air -- has campaigned in dozens of countries.
  • "Followers gather for memorial for the Maharishi at his Dutch home; " National Post. Don Mills, Ont.: Feb 8, 2008. pg. A.3

Are those sufficient?   Will Beback  talk  19:28, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

From memory there are countless pictures of people practising Yogic Flying not sitting in Lotus Position that have been published in newspapers. I don't have time now...but if no one else can find them I will find sources in the next few days.--Uncreated (talk) 19:51, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

For the record the lotus position is not simply sitting with your legs crossed either, in case there is some confusion as to what the lotus position is.--Uncreated (talk) 19:54, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

There are pictures of people described as practicing Yogic Flying using other positions, but I'm doubtful as to their authenticity.   Will Beback  talk  20:26, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Will I was thinking of pictures of Yogic Flying demonstrations that had been published in news papers where the Yogic flyers have not been sitting in lotus position.--Uncreated (talk) 21:43, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

look, if you have such reports you are welcome to cite them and add "sometimes also other positions" to the article. This doesn't change the obvious, that the hallmark of "Yogic Flying" is people hopping around in the lotus position. --dab (𒁳) 10:19, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

I find it a tiring aspect of articles under COI attack that even the most straighforward and easily referenced statements are submitted to tedious criticism. This is WP:POINT. As I said earlier, it took me five minutes to figure out these articles suffer from long-term COI, and the further time I spent with them has done nothing to dispel this impression. --dab (𒁳) 21:27, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

I personally practiced YF is siddhasana, as did many others. I believe it would be more accurate to simply say "cross-legged".--Kala Bethere (talk) 14:37, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Will Beback just presented four references for "lotus posture". If you have further references citing siddhasana, you are most welcome to add them. Otherwise, "cross-legged" is fine with me, too, as it effectively illustrate the exercise without taking recourse to Yoga terminology. --dab (𒁳) 15:29, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

That's fine Dbachmann, if you want information that is not the way the practice in generally applied, go ahead and state it that way. I'm just trying to improve the article. Few I knew could sustain the lotus position, although a few people would. "Cross-legged" seems more accurate to me, and more easily understood.--Kala Bethere (talk) 16:05, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

1. "Maharishi Effect Research on the Maharishi Effect". Maharishi University of Management. Retrieved December 29, 2009.

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