I am very much enjoying "The Bad Food Bible" by Dr. Aaron E. Carroll. He is a research mentor at the Indiana University Medical School. He uses his first couple of chapters to discuss various research designs and approaches. Science research is a marvelous thing but like anything else, it can become a fetish or be misused.
It is easy for popularizers and journalists to characterize research in ways that distort the findings. In today's US, many people want final, uncomplicated answers whether they are available or not. Carroll discusses Butter, Meat, Eggs, Salt, Gluten, GMOs, Alcohol, Coffee, Diet Soda, MSG, and Non-Organic Foods. In each case, the actual evidence against the food is weak and it turns out that moderate eating of that food is fine for most people. One of his comments is that there is a rule in journalism that if the title of an article is a question, the answer to the question is No. However, if a food is being frowned upon popularly, regardless of the evidence, it is easy for people to decide that food is bad.
His discussion and review of evidence includes emphasizing repeatedly that experience or anecdotes are not research. My grandmother lived to be 88 and she smoked steadily from age 18 on. However, that does not mean you or I should try it. I have mentioned before Prof. John Ioannidis. His famous article "Why most published research findings are false" is a good explanation of the difficulty faced when trying to uncover new miracles or debunk old myths. http://robotics.cs.tamu.edu/RSS2015NegativeResults/pmed.0020124.pdf
As I read research efforts to establish the value of meditating for ten minutes a day (ok, five minutes), I find assistant professors trying to become associate professors by measuring the benefits or lack of them of the popular subject of mindfulness, awareness of what one is thinking and feeling. I keep reading about the level of stress and worry even young healthy people experience these days. Rather than trying to measure this response time or that galvanic skin response, I suggest anyone interested simply sit still quietly for 5 or so minutes. Concentrate on breathing, count breaths if desired. Or, simply keep looking at some neutral spot. For many people, the time immediately starts to drag and the question naturally comes to mind: Why am I doing this? Sometimes, the question is Am I doing this correctly?
Rather that reviewing research studies and measuring this variable or that, I suggest simply spending that short amount of time sitting with yourself. You don't have to prove the benefits. You don't have to run tests or experiments. You can spare a few quiet minutes.
