You're Doctors Goddamn It

n May 1991, an article on the benefits of Maharishi Ayur Veda was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). When JAMA's editor, Dr. George D. Lundberg learned that the journal was misled about the authors' financial involvement with the TM [Transcendental Meditation] movement, he assigned associate news editor Andrew A. Skolnick [11] to investigate and write an expose on the movement's efforts to promote its trademarked line of traditional Indian remedies [12]. "An investigation of the movement's marketing practices reveals what appears to be a widespread pattern of misinformation, deception, and manipulation of lay and scientific news media," Skolnick wrote. "This campaign appears to be aimed at earning at least the look of scientific respectability for the TM movement, as well as at making profits from sales of the many products and services that carry the Maharishi's name." It also countered the article's claim that Maharishi Ayur-Veda was more cost effective than standard medical care. In July 1992, Dr. Deepak Chopra and two TM organizations filed a $194 million libel suit against Lundberg, Skolnick, and the American Medical Association. The suit was dismissed without prejudice in March 1993 and no part of the JAMA article was retracted.

"I was taught to lie and to get around the pretty rules of the 'unenlightened' in order to get favorable reports into the media. We were taught how to exploit the reporters' gullibility and fascination with the exotic, especially what comes from the East. We thought we weren't doing anything wrong, because we were told it was often necessary to deceive the unenlightened to advance our guru's plan to save the world."

Many critics ridicule the TM Movement's claim of a Maharishi Effect, which the movement says is produced whenever a sufficient number of TMers practice the TM-Sidhi program together. This effect, they claim, reduces crime, prevents and ends wars, detours hurricanes, and improves life in many other ways for everyone within the area, not just the TM-Sidhi practitioners. One of the most controversal studies published to support the TM movement's claim of a Maharishi Effect is the 1993 National Demonstration Project. In this study, the TM researchers led by John Hagelin, claimed to have produced an 18 percent reduction in violent crimes in Washington, D.C., by having about 4,000 TM-Sidhi practitioners practice the program daily during June and July 1993. The findings were ridiculed by critics as an example of pseudoscientific data cooking [45] Skeptical Inquirer, and won the study's lead researcher, an Ig Nobel Prize. Members of the TM movement have dismissed all criticism of the study and stand by the findings[46].
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendental_meditation

Doctors have responsibilities on par with teachers, judges, journalists and police to regulate and perpetuate society. Of course, no one actually believes in these responsibilities with me. At least they investigated the fraud, which is far better than any of the others have managed. One of course, is always filled with pride for our steely eyed scientists and statisticians who worship numbers and data, not vauge fantasy.