For example, in the Study On Binaural CD, it says:

2. Hypothesis
The test participants would feel significantly more relaxed after listening to the verum CD than after listening to the placebo CD….The hypothesis is considered to be falsified.

What’s interesting about that is how you need to get through a LOT of info before you read the results, and up until that point, the study is written in such a way that you think the hypothesis will be upheld.

More, reading the study reveals how tricky it is to make a good protocol. For example, it says that people listening to a CD designed to produce delta EEG waves did, in fact, produce more delta waves. But this is a subtle thing: To really test that, you would need to have a CD that turned on delta, then turned it off, then on, then off… in some randomized pattern. And then you would have to see how accurately the EEG correlated with the delta intervals. That is, did the listener start producing delta waves IMMEDIATELY upon the CD producing 1hz binaural beats? And did they stop producing delta AS SOON AS the CD stopped the binaural beats? If not, how much leeway is okay? What if the listener is producing delta when the CD isn’t making delta-frequency beats?

In other words, the study was skewed to test for the positive hypothesis about binaural beats making matching brain waves and this aspect wasn’t fully analyzed.

seeingwithsound.com/newpubs/binaural_beats/

STUDY ON BINAURAL CD *also available in pfd format*

209.85.141.104/search?q=cache:4CdmY3FYj9gJ:www.somnia-sleeptherapy.com/ia_pics/Study2-Somnia_1.pdf+Binaural+Beats+double+blind+pilot+study&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=14&gl=us&client=firefox-a

Yes, I’ve seen it… I think you’re use of “supposedly” is accurate.

The machine he was using is called the Mind Mirror. It’s a highly inaccurate device (notice that in the video he doesn’t have a collection of 16+ electrodes glued to his noggin, like you would for an actual EEG).

Given how much electrical activity our brain kicks out from regions just designed to keep us BREATHING, I find the idea that he, or anyone, could stop all electrical activity to be highly suspect.

And, then it brings up the other point: Hypothetically, let’s say he CAN do this. So what? What does that mean for you or me or Hannah Montana? If there isn’t a reliable technology for teaching others to reproduce this effect, it’s just a neat example of an unusual person. It doesn’t mean that it’s better/worse or proves anything in particular. That is, it’s interesting (ish), but the meaning is up for serious debate.

Interestingly, even that site doesn’t show real-time images or, better, movies. At some point almost anyone doing almost anything might have brainwave patterns that match what’s on their site.

Further, without a control (e.g. people listening to the same CD without the binaural beat, or listening to a regular beat instead of binaural, or people just resting for the same amount of time, or watching TV, or…), the single-frame images don’t really say anything.

Similarly, unless the effect is shown with many people (a decent, randomized sample size), it’s also not really meaningful.

Finally, for now at least, the research they reference about the Frequency Following effect is misrepresented. The research says that certain areas in the brain resonated with the binaural beat. This is not the same as “binaural beats produce Alpha/Theta/Delta waves.”

Or not. I guess it’s kind of like the psych class that totally forgot what they wrote the day after 9/11, some to the degree that they denied their own handwriting.

You were part of the inspiration for my Earth Day blog. It’s up already. Something about ant farms.

Ann O’Johnson
http://annojohnson.wordpress.com

I made the same points about the problems with studying meditation to the head of the Naropa University Consciousness Lab. He agreed, but suggested that *some* researchers who recognize the dilemma were designing studies that could be better than some that have been, well, let’s just say: lacking a valid control group.

For example, Jon Kabat-Zinn had a study where a group who applied for a meditation program were split in half (that is, people who applied were divided into 2 groups, not that each individual was drawn and halved). One half took the 8 week (I think) meditation course. The other was told they would have to start after the first class was done. The study reported that the meditation group ended up “happier” than the control.

The biggest problem (other than knowing what “happier” meant) is that the non-meditating group was not a valid control group.

The meditators changed their lives — up to 2 hours of meditation every day, a support group, a major change in their daily schedule, plus the anticipation that they would be helped — but the non-meditators made no changes. Plus the non-meditators had their hopes for help dashed (or, at least, postponed)

What might have been better is to divide the controls into multiple groups… each group had to change their lives with a commensurate amount of effort and time put into another activity, e.g. watching comedy movies, getting massage, taking a nap, having sex, etc.

Plus, the group was self-selecting… these people WANTED to learn meditation because they already believed it would help. Their results could have been placebo effects.

I contend that it may be impossible to avoid the placebo effects because of the pre-existing beliefs most people have about it (good *or* bad).

Speaking of pre-existing … people can only have that unconscious material if you believe that there is such a thing as “unconscious material.” I’m more than a bit iffy on that one.

Even though this comment is a bit off-topic, I’m happy to address in.

You and I seemed to have “missed each other at the station,” since:

a) Nowhere in Quantum Wealth do I suggest that anything in the course translates into increased wealth or any other specific result. In fact, one of the last pages in the manual for the class says, “The way to guarantee misery is to use any of the techniques from the class with the purpose of attaining a specific result.” And while I give this same message throughout the class as well, I didn’t make it clear enough, apparently.

b) There can’t be a “counterfeit” million dollar bill, since there’s no such thing as a real one

c) The *exercise* we do with the million dollar bills is merely to *demonstrate* that “money” is any item that a community agrees to use to facilitate exchange… and that you can create a “community of 2″ when someone agrees to take a million dollar bill in exchange for whatever they give you. Another way to describe that is: “money” is simply a shortcut to agreement and the exercise can give one the experience of that concept.

d) If you got rich by setting up a seminar, you clearly didn’t copy my style since I haven’t attained anything resembling riches from a class that I teach rarely, and only when someone decides to host a class on my behalf (for local classes in Boulder, I only teach when I’ve had 15 or more people request a class). Also, I don’t charge a fixed price for the seminar — people decide how/if/what they want to pay (plus there are no back-end “advanced” classes, so QW is not a sales pitch for anything else). And I have never relied on the classes for my income.

e) In fact, you and I agree completely! The best way to make something happen is to apply effort to that aim (even though that is no guarantee, obviously). The point of the class is to share some techniques that I’ve found to be helpful in rapidly reducing the stress and confusion we often have about our goals, and to more easily and quickly find action steps one could take, with much less anxiety and aneurysm-inducing anal contraction than we typically think are required (and I have no philosophical issue with capillary-busting effort, if that’s what one chooses to engage in.)

f) I’ve worked “hard” and I’ve worked “less hard.” Neither is, inherently, better than the other. But I prefer the latter; that way has never resulted in my hair falling out, while the former has.

g) Oh, we agree on another point, as well: If you read this blog, you’ll probably notice that I’m perhaps even more critical than you of The Secret and of anyone who believes that any specific outcome can be obtained through magical thinking and superstitious behavior.

h) Finally, since I don’t think I have “the way”, nor do I believe QW is offering a “prescription for living,” nor do I think of myself as a model of anything (I don’t believe my own historical results could be reproduced by anyone, myself included), I definitely don’t think of my actions as a public service. I don’t have the idea that the public *needs* to be served.

-Steven