Arthur Schopenhauer wisely wrote: All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third it is accepted as being self-evident. He understood the resistance scientists had in accepting new evidence based on a different understanding of how nature worked. They held on to and protected their own established world views. Anomalies lead to paradigm shifts, which usually take a generation to accept. The old guard dies off along with their limited understanding of reality. The research Dr. Leffler is referencing involves the field effects of coherent collective consciousness on a stressful population. It requires a deeper framework to understand it, in the same way superconductivity, superfluidity, and lasers needed quantum mechanics to explain how they worked. But the important thing is, it works, is repeatable, and prevents further suffering. Einstein pointed out we cannot solve problems doing the same things using the same level of consciousness that created them. The editors of one of the top sociological journals that reviewed one of the first studies said that even though they didn't fully understand the theory, they were still publishing the paper because the scientific methodology was sound. They even encouraged future studies, which were done and later published. The chances that this phenomenon could have happened by chance were one in millions. More enlightened and open-minded leaders have used this approach, and it made a difference. Here is an article in Psycholgy Today: "Can Meditation Change The World?" by Steve Taylor, about a president of an African nation who used TM to turn his country around. http://theuncarvedblog.com/2012/12/19/ken-wilber-said-meditation-can-change-the-world-jaochim-chissano-showed-it-could-steve-taylor/ ============================================= Thank you for your comments. It is funny that you mention superconductivity because I did not know how it worked when I was in school, but my next door neighbor was a researcher working on a semi-empirical theory of superconductivity for a major aerospace company which linked current skin depth with the frequency of the current for use in non-destructive testing and superconducting antennas. I did some of the fundamental computing on his research results using my school's computers. But, I had a physical, rather than a psychological, phenomena which could be measured against calibrated sources and the results analyzed and plotted. There were no specious proxies that were substitutes for the dependent and independent variables under test. In most of the research citied, especially that by Orme-Johnson, et al. (doi: 10.1177/0022002788032004009 Journal of Conflict Resolution December 1988 vol. 32 no. 4 776-812 ), there does not appear to be any fundamental research on the selection of proxies for the quality of life in a nation, at least to the extent of suggesting that a correlation would necessarily lead to a conclusion of causality. And, when people tell me that a deeper understanding of a framework is necessary to understand the subject matter, I tend to believe that I could offer a credible interpretation of string theory to suggest that the phenomena exists. But then again, my job would be to devise an experiment that supports my contention. Unfortunately, the experiment that was chosen does not stand up to scientific scrutiny because it appears that a majority of physicists reject the conflation of the Maharishi Field Effect with any phenomena found in quantum physics. You article on Mozambique’s leadership using TM is suggestive of a post-facto application of the facts as there appears to be plenty of old-fashioned wheeling, dealing, and politics involved in the nation's current status. I would go so far as to posit that the major beneficial effects on individuals are achieved through bio-feedback awareness and enhanced by the placebo effect. And, that unlike gravity or even quantum entanglement, such benefits do not appear to apply to large audiences at a distance. Thanks for commenting. -- steve