The recent movie “What the <bleep> do we know?” contains the allegation that in 1993 a large group meditated in Washington DC after predicting that they could thereby make the crime rate drop. According to this movie (and other sites, all referencing one another) the crime rate did in fact drop drastically during the meditation.
Now, I would think that had this actually occurred, it would have been acknowledged somewhere other than in the various other TM publications. A Google search brings me only links that circle back to the same place.
Please forgive me if this bleeds over into IMHO territory, but I would really like to know if it’s possible to verify what these folks claim. What’s The Straight Dope?
We have one single event that could easily be due to coincidence. Let me see a study where this is done in 100 cities. I’ll even take 10 cities if the trend in those cities is the opposite of the entire rest of the US.
I agree, but what I’m questioning is if it can be verified that even the one event actually happened. The folks involve claim that the results were far beyond any statistical margin of error or coincidence. I’m not enough of a statistician to verify or refute the claims.
Violent crime in general has been declining for the past 10-15 years all over the country. New York City’s murder rate peaked at over 2200 per year in 1991, and now it’s around 600, the lowest rate in nearly 50 years. Other cities have seen less drastic decreases. The reasons are very complex, and trying to correlate one event notoriously difficult statistical trends is not a valid argument. Correlation does not imply causation.
In order to prove that meditation reduces murder rate, you’d need a set of cities to experiment on and a set for control purposes. Of course, all cities are completely different, so there’s a confounding factor right there. How about meditating for six months, and not meditating for the rest of the year, and comparing the results? This does not account for seasonal variations in crime rates and general unrest.
You could meditate one year on and one off, but as NYC shows, crime rates will fluxuate anyway regardless of what you do. In short, it’s nearly impossible to scientifically substantiate a claim such as this.
I agree completely. Is there anyplace where the ordinary citizen can acquire the actual crime statistics, though? I would love to be able, for example, to have a chart of the entire year, not just the few days of the “study” and to show that the alleged decrease was just a part of normal variation (which the authors claim it is not).
A quick Google search found that DC had its third most murders post-1960 in 1993. The same site says that violent crime reached its peak in DC that year, at 2,921 incidents per 100,000 inhabitants. Cite.
So, did TM keep the murder rate lower than it would have been otherwise? :dubious:
I’m betting that there may have been a blip in those months, if indeed the claim is true. But I can’t find month-by-month stats.
I don’t know about this particular instance but the TM folks have made similar claims before. James Randi has a chapter about them in his book “Flim-Flam” with statistics showing that they haven’t brought about peace and lower crime rates by meditating on it. Be happy to provide references if anyone wants them.
Oh, here’s a couple of responses to his review of this movie in Roger Ebert’s “Answer Man” column, basically it’s a commercial and the “experts” in it are not exactly Richard Feynman when it comes to physics.
Your cites are from a TM website and the Mahareshi Mahesh Yogi’s university website. I have no doubt that they know some great relaxation and meditation techniques but I’ll take any claims of scientific evidence from them with a fairly large grain of salt based on their track record.
Valgard, I tend to agree. I’m looking for stuff that would bear one way or the other on the alleged facts. If you have other references, I’d love to have them if it’s not too much trouble.
The Ebert site had a couple of good points, although I was only able to find one Q/A that had to do with this movie.
freido, thanks for the link. It provides, as far as I could find, stats per year, but not for time periods within the year, as Ravenman reports. The study mentioned prominently in the film claimed success based on week-to-week occurrences, and actually has a scientific-looking graph. I wonder if they just made the numbers up? Or if they had a special source for the more detailed information?
A very spirtually-minded friend took me to this movie, and found it to be highly significant and full of meaning. I’m not sure if it’s a good idea or not for me to burst her bubble; she’s a person with a lot of difficulties and problems, and if she sincerely believes meditation will help the world, who am I to discourage her?
Well, I think I’m moving down a slippery slope into Cafe Society or IMHO, so thanks to all for the facts.