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Comment by timinman | Hacker News Reader

If I'm not mistaken, this is a very thin veneer of science applied to a thick spread of dogma.

1. Test shows that smart subject is smart (capacity to learn, etc).

2. Subject of the test says meditation makes you happy.

3. The author then tries to make science say meditation makes you happy: 'It is not difficult to see why scientists declared Matthieu Ricard the happiest man they had ever tested.'

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He was the happiest man tested, but they haven't tested very many people. "Matthieu Ricard... has been the subject of intensive clinical tests at the University of Wisconsin, as a result of which he is frequently described as the happiest man in the world. It's a somewhat flattering title, he says, given the tiny percentage of the global population who have had their brain patterns monitored by the same state-of-the-art technology.... The fact remains that, out of hundreds of volunteers whose scores ranged from +0.3 (what you might call the Morrissey zone) to -0.3 (beatific) the Frenchman scored -0.45."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/matthieu-r...

He's probably quite happy that he gets so much attention and has to do so little except sit around and smile.

Yes, he spent 26 years studying Buddhism so he could get media attention.

What's with this dismissive attitude?

It's not dismissive, it's skeptic, and rightfully so - there are many flaws in this article (as outlined above) that might not come from the scientists, but from dodgy reporting. Who describes that guy as "the happiest man"? Is it the scientists (doubtful) or is it journalists looking for a "sexy" headline?

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