Personal null results
If you do a Google search for ‘meditation’, you might find results like this:
Do a bit more digging, and you might find this article (or something similar): ‘I believed the hype and did mindfulness meditation for dumb reasons: now I'm trying to reverse the damage’. You should read this one, it’s pretty interesting. Then there are these reports by Nick Cammarata on ‘Jhana’, a state of bliss you can apparently reach if you do a ton of meditation. It’s claimed that Jhana is better than sex or any drug, and you reach it if you do lots and lots and lots of meditation.
Like in science, where null results (where an intervention appears to have no effect, either positive or negative1) are less likely to be reported, people probably don’t want to read an article titled ‘I did meditation on and off for a few years and nothing really happened of any significance’. That’s what happe…
