The Western scientific and health community of scientists and clinicians has generated in excess of 3,000 peer-reviewed articles on or referring to meditation (as featured in the major bibliographic databases such as MEDLINE and PsycINFO). However, despite this impressive accumulation of publications, the number of randomised controlled trials of meditation published per year—studies that would be regarded as serious explorations of meditation’s effects— reveal a different story. Although meditation is often a topic of superficial discussion amongst scientists and clinicians, it is rarely the subject of in-depth scientific examination.
More discussion on the quantity of scientific research exploring meditation can be found at Dr Ramesh Manocha’s blog.