Making epistemic goods compatible: knowledge-making practices in a lifestyle intervention RCT on mindfulness and compassion meditation

Abstract

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The normal is pathological: semi-conscious brains, mindless habits, and the paradoxical science of mindfulness

“…As is well-known, the standard procedure used in clinical trials involves the comparison of a user group and a control group. This method was initially invented for the testing of drug treatments and continues to be used extensively for this purpose, even though it is not without problems (Lilienfeld 1982;Smolka 2022;Timmermans and Berg 2003). The dynamics of mindfulness therapy, as well as other behavioral therapy methods, however, differ significantly from drug treatments.…”

“…But one obvious implication of this is that it becomes quite difficult to ascertain, for instance, whether two patients who report meditating 30 min per day are going through the same 'treatment'. In a recent pioneering study, Smolka (2022) has shown in detail the full scope of such complications, to which there is little to add. Here, however, I would like to focus on one fundamental problem that underlies most of the methodological challenges that mindfulness researchers face.…”

“…There are, however, also theories of mindfulness that do not rely on Buddhist teachings(Langer 1989(Langer , 2014. 2 There are however some important exceptions such asSmolka's (2022) praxiographic research on clinical trials,Stanley and Kortelainen's (2019) study of a training session andStanley and Longden's (2016) interactional analysis.…”