[dschiptsov]

but why is it so hard for Harvard academics to understand that the factors affecting people from the Mid-Western middle class, Southern urban poor, New England suburban wealthy, etc. are all very different?

In the East it is understood and named millenias ago. Roughly speaking, it is what they call [inner] "peace" or "balance" (of mind) which comes from realizations of one's own nature.

This is, of course, not mere abstract concepts, at least to realized people, and fundamental changes that a different state of mind propagates to the whole system (body) are easily observable and scientifically testable (chronic stresses, anxiety/personality disorders, etc.)

So, all these middle-class blah-blah people, loosely speaking, need to know thyself and [then] transform themseves.)

[Bsharp]

I'm sorry if this is ignorance, but they can scientifically test the effect of your state of mind on various psychological disorders? That seems like it's another topic of immense subjectivity. Isn't the objective measurement of one's state of mind, and even certain psychological conditions, in practice difficult/impossible to the point where studies are non-reproducible or highly debatable?

I really don't know, so if you have examples of such studies I'd be more than happy to become informed.

[dschiptsov]

There are studies of brain waves of Tibetan monks (compared to mere mortals,) but that is not the point.

The point is, that in a broad sense, Buddha's teaching (Four Noble Truths + Eight-fold Path) is an ultimate CBT, or meta-CBT if you wish, upon which any particular CBT could be easily made.

The notion that [only] a CBT provides "stable" changes in one's mental states, (de-conditioning, re-training) compared to "mere lifting of symptoms" by constant medication, for many people is not even debatable. It just works.

[ekianjo]

> for many people is not even debatable. It just works.

Not even debatable, huh?

Wikipedia: A major criticism has been that clinical studies of CBT efficacy (or any psychotherapy) are not double-blind (i.e., neither subjects nor therapists in psychotherapy studies are blind to the type of treatment). They may be single-blinded, the rater may not know the treatment the patient received, but neither the patients nor the therapists are blinded to the type of therapy given (two out of three of the persons involved in the trial, i.e., all of the persons involved in the treatment, are unblinded). The patient is an active participant in correcting negative distorted thoughts, thus quite aware of the treatment group they are in.

[...]

The element of hope and expectation on the part of the patients to get better in non-blinded trials will bias the results in favor of CBT. The informed consent procedure required to enter a psychotherapy trial biases the subjects who enter to those that are favorably inclined to the psychotherapy. Taken together, trails using psychotherapy do not meet the qualifications of high quality evidence.[96]

---

Not double-blind, then there's not much science in it, then.

[dschiptsov]

Come on, it is just words. There are millions of people who, say, quit smocking/drinking without any therapy or medication, just because they have realized they doesn't need it anymore. Is this a part of science or not?)

OK, just once.) There is a distinct process of memeization of science is going on, it is not even pop-science it is all about deriving memes from memes.

There is no secret that vast majority of studies are performed to "keep the funding going" with conclusions that would please the investors - "they cannot caught us after all". Most of these recent cancer/blood papers are not even reproducible, leave alone verifiable.

Doing non-meme science is much harder, much less profitable comparing to publishing fiction/sensationalist papers. It is a duty, not a business.

There are millions of so-called studies. "Mediterranean Diet is the most healthy one." Really? Have they factored out the water quality and air quality? How exactly? What accounts to air quality and what to the quality of water sources? In what extent? In the long run?

This is most obvious and silly example, but others are even more messy. How so-called state of stress is related to production of this or that hormones or other chemicals? How exactly it affects so-called metabolism? How they resolved sleeping issues, noise levels in the environment, air quality, diet?

The systems they are trying to study is vastly complex and correlations, even if such were discovered, not mere assumed, are not causation, and definitely not single ones.

So, to blindly follow what other people label "modern science" is, to some extent, is exactly the same as to follow a religion - just accept on faith because they said so, without asking any questions. This is meme-based, pop "science" which cannot be trusted.