Could you give an example of a scientific result that was oversold by the media?
I was the second author in Sara Lazar’s 2005 paper “Meditation experience is associated with increased cortical thickness.” It is a lovely paper, but its findings were preliminary.
Was this the study that had everyone saying that meditation changes your brain?
Yes. It is cited over 800 times in scientific literature. Sara is still interviewed constantly about this study. And scientists know that it’s a nonrandomized cross-sectional study, which means that the measures are only taken at one time point. So if there is a difference in brain thickness, we don’t know if the cause is practice or lifestyle, or if people with thicker brains are simply attracted to mindfulness. To see that something is causing something else, we need to see change over time that’s controlled. And we don’t see that in the paper. But the typical headline in the popular press was “Mindfulness Makes Your Brain Grow.”
We also didn’t claim that there was a directly measured behavioral benefit in having a thicker brain. (There are actually some conditions where it’s not good to have a thicker brain!) We were really clear about the significance of our findings in our paper, but because the brain is such a fetish and because the idea of growing your brain was so attractive, many media portrayals missed the subtlety entirely.
Sara Lazar’s finding has since been replicated. I wasn’t totally sure about the results until they were replicated.
So even though the measures were only taken at one point, because it has been replicated the results are still significant?
Yes, it has been replicated many times in different ways. It’s very exciting for a scientist to have your findings replicated.