Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions - James Randi [54]
TM has seized upon this gimmick as well. Michael West of Cardiff University, who compared subjects listening to soothing music against experienced TM practitioners for effects on skin resistance, has seen the TMers totally misrepresent his work in their selective reports. He disagreed categorically with their conclusions, and in his own words said of their reports, "The interpretation... is certainly not honest."
Proponents of TM argue that their meditation produces other changes and improvements in an individual's life, but that claim is far from proved. After all, TM students expect miracles that others not involved in a mystical/religious movement don't expect. It's natural that they will extol the wonders they believe they have discovered, and, as we have seen, they certainly read more into their supposedly scientific evidence than is warranted.
One of the most publicized claims made by the TMers is called the "Maharishi Effect." If just a tiny one percent of any population is dedicated to Transcendental Meditation, say the gurus, the quality of life will improve for all. As proof they offer the effects on certain selected communities around the world, after this one percent has been attained. TMer Professor Candy Borland, interviewed by the "Nova" television team, said, "What we found was that in the one-percent cities... crime rate tended to—or decrease [sic] in all cases, and the average decrease was about 8.8%, but in the control cities, crime rate increased in about 75% of them and the average increase was 7.7%. And the difference in these changes was statistically significant."
But there are other explanations. One of the cities cited for its crime decrease was Santa Barbara, California. The TM study there coincided with a major police crackdown on hard-drug users, and the noted crime rate drop was the result of a 50-percent decrease in forgery and larceny crimes—the crimes that owe their predominance in this community to the drug users, with their great need for cash. In Davis, another selected center, at the end of 1972 the police apprehended one youth who was committing some thirty burglaries a month! That, coupled with a drastic reduction in bicycle thefts owing to a police campaign, brought a drop in the overall crime rate; the serene attitudes of one out of every hundred people in the population of the town was not a factor. In Britain, too, an area is pointed out to us as an example of the one-percent effect. Derbyshire is said to have experienced a drop in crime and accidents in 1975. Really? Records consulted by the authorities there show that accidents were up compared with the previous year, and though crime figures did drop, they were much higher than in 1973! So it seems that the one-percent figure is only a theoretical claim—another one of many—that TM proponents had better take back to the old drawing board for reworking—or discarding.
TM headquarters has produced an expensive and elegant series of brochures printed in full color and gold, publications that try to sell the reader on the claim that science and TM are synonymous. By means of diagrams and graphs drawn from pre-1978 data, tendentious statements are squeezed out of very little evidence. I referred the whole physics/consciousness matter to Philip Morrison, an outstanding physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "The Pilot Projects are so audacious an example of wish fulfillment schemes that they command admiration as much as astonishment," said Professor Morrison. He was referring to the TM test areas where the Maharishi Effect was said to be so pronounced. As for TM's attempts to draw comparisons between modern physics and society, thus lending scientific stature to