First of all this is the sci-hub link so you all can judge for yourselves. I think it's worth skimming the paper at least:

https://sci-hub.st/https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

In defense of the paper, anyone who's spent time in yoga centers or even monasteries has noticed this effect occasionally. It's possible to meet someone there whose giant ego and total lack of self-awareness makes you cringe. It's happened to me.

But skimming this paper left me feeling sad. I can't blame the scientists for not knowing better, as this is what we are trained to do. Reproducibility, large sample sizes, p-values, Bayesian methods, etc.

The problem is that Buddhist meditation (among other spiritual paradigms) doesn't suit these techniques at all. Meditation isn't like penicillin or insulin. You can't easily do a double-blind placebo controlled experiment on mediation, and two people sitting quietly in meditation can be doing completely different things.

Plus, the Buddhist path is not linear at all, nor does it prescribe meditation in 15 minute chunks at the end of the workday as they do in this study. It's an entire reimagining of one's way of life that that not only involves extensive periods of meditation in isolation, but also self-reflection and practicing morality.

At monasteries, for example, monks typically go on retreat for three months out of the year (which means they mostly sit in meditation during that time.) To even become a monk you have to relinquish your money and belongings. Monks are not even allowed to own anything beyond a bowl and a robe and even shave their face (including their eyebrows) as a way of undifferentiating themselves from one another and softening the attachment to the self. All this is to say that if meditation were enhancing one's sense of self, monasteries wouldn't be doing it.

As far as the study methods go, how do monks score on questions such as "How central is it for you to be free from envy?" If they score highly, does that reflect a high sense of self-centrality? Why?

Publishing a study with a title like that feels like a mic-drop moment -- ha, we got them -- but what it shows, to me anyway, is a deep naivete of a several-thousand-year-old tradition.

I say this as a scientist and a meditator. I'm optimistic that in the future we'll do better than this.

This last part is off-topic but if I still have your attention and you're curious, there are a few topics that I think are completely understudied that will hopefully get some meaningful scientific attention in the coming years. Maybe you'll be the one to write the paper!

1. The chakras. They are actually not bullshit. But what are they? Are they purely proprioceptive (i.e. only appear to be located in the body, but aren't) or are do they have an actual analogue in the body, like nerve ganglia. I don't know.

2. Tummo. This is getting some traction now because it's a completely wild that people can heat up their bodies with their minds. The heat apparently starts in the navel chakra and works its way up the "central channel" or "shushumna".

3. The intersection between pranayama and sleep ("yogi sleep" or yogis who only need a few hours of sleep a night.)

4. The "signature" of awakening. I've heard Andrew Holecek describe awakening as "like waking up into a lucid dream, but way way bigger." Is there a signature of this in the mind that you can see somewhere, say in an fMRI?