The Placebo Effect May Hurt Studies
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One major flaw with the study of mindfulness education is how they’re conducted. To separate students into experimental and control groups, they are told what the experiment is. It makes sense that students in the mindfulness group believe they will improve just by luck.
The placebo might be helpful at first but ultimately doesn’t last. James Coyne, a staunch critic of psychological research methods, worries about what will happen when students realize there might not be anything special about mindfulness compared to other practices.
