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To the Editor:
The Society of Neuroscience (SfN) has invited the Dalai Lama to give a featured lecture on the “Neuroscience of Meditation” at the 2005 annual meeting. In a two-day period, a petition letter against the lecture was signed by 544 people from 19 countries, with only 14 currently residing in China while 229 of the cosignatories are not of Chinese origin.
I am a neuroscientist who came to the U.S. from China twenty years ago. I am against any political dictatorship or suppression and am a member of Amnesty International. I also have coauthored a Nature supplement article critical of some Chinese policies in 2004 that is banned in China.
The responses of most of those who support the SfN lecture simplistically reduce the debates to issues of free speech, ignoring the fact that it is about an official academic society conferring apparent legitimacy to a wrong topic at a wrong time.
After analyzing publicly available materials, it is not difficult to predict that the major explicit messages of the Dalai Lama lecture will be that: 1) Tibetan Buddhist practices promote compassion, partly because of (or helped by) their long-time experience in meditation, and 2) Western science has provided a neurological proof that Tibetan Buddhist practices promote compassion.
The first message is similar to any self-righteous statement that every religion makes about itself. The provision of a scientific forum by the SfN to the leader of one religion to proclaim self-righteousness is a favoritism that will not be granted to Muslims or Christians.
The second message is simply wrong. If one pays close attention to the scientific literature, one will find that there are no published scientific papers to substantiate the specific claim and that the research on Buddhist meditation is extremely limited: Rigorous research has not been published by any objective scientist without declared association with the Dalai Lama.
Many steps must occur before one can conclude that a behavior, such as meditation, can affect brain activity and that brain activity then, in turn, affects another behavior, such as compassion. Two correlations and two cause-effect relationships must be proven. To establish a correlation between meditation and a brain activity pattern, it is necessary to exclude other factors. Establishing correlation is not equal to knowing the causal effect of mediation on brain activity, even further removed from proving meditation (or other Buddhist practices) as the cause of compassion. Researchers are now at step zero in terms of establishing the scientific linkage between meditation (or other Buddhist practices) and compassion: there is only a claim of, but no paper on, a correlation for one part of the chain of links.
The news media and the public are not likely to read the scientific literature to realize the status of the field (if it can be called that) but may well misinterpret the SfN presentation of the Dalai Lama as the scientific endorsement of Buddhist practices.
If, 20 years from now, Buddhist meditation turns out to be proven of tremendous benefit, I will be happy to be laughed at. If the opposite happens, I will have a moment of amusement in my old age, looking back at this episode, when the objectivity and standards of some scientists have been compromised by political leanings.
Sincerely,
Yi Rao
Department of Neurology
Northwestern University Feinberg School
of Medicine
To the Editor:
I am writing in unequivocal support of the Dalai Lama’s speaking to the SfN members at the annual meeting this year. I am looking forward to it.
An effort by a petition to cancel the Dalai Lama’s talk is ill-considered and politically motivated.
First of all, all objections based on so-called scientific reasons are moot because the Dalai Lama is participating in “Dialogues Between Neuroscience and Society.” There is no scientific “litmus test” for such a talk. I fully support initiatives to promote interactions between the public and neuroscientists. I am quite pleased that the Society for Neuroscience has invited such a prominent and acclaimed world leader as the Dalai Lama to speak, and on any topic he sees fit.
The implication by the petitioners that there is no basis for the scientific study of meditation is simply preposterous. I am almost embarrassed to have to remind my colleagues that no matter how little agreement there might be on any particular research topic, every psychological state that human beings experience with the help of their brains, from hunger to joy, fear to euphoria, obsession to love — even dare we admit, religious ecstasy or love of God — is worthy of neuroscientific study.
An unbiased observer might reasonably conclude that this group’s a priori exclusion of a “meditative state” from the auspices of “neuroscience” is motivated by something other than purely scientific concern. The opening statement of “Against Dalai Lama’s Lecture at SfN 2005” focusing on the Dalai Lama’s “controversial political agenda” tells the true reason for the petition.
I was astounded at the logic regarding what criteria ought to define a “legitimate” member of the public. The Dalai Lama is legitimate because he is a highly respected public figure on the international stage, a well-regarded leader in multiple spheres. His views on reincarnation per se have nothing to do with his “legitimacy” as an influential member of the public, the kind of person with whom the SfN must be engaged. To argue that the Dalai Lama’s views on reincarnation are “against the very foundation of modern neuroscience” is simply not true and shows a profound lack of understanding of where and what those foundations are.
In summary, despite their denial, the key issue for the proponents of this campaign is all and only about the right of the Dalai Lama to speak, a right they would refuse because of political differences. The “scientific” objections are ironic when not overtly wrong and laughable when not merely sad.
Sincerely,
John H. Hannigan, PhD
Professor of Obstetrics
Professor of Psychology
Professor of Cellular
and Clinical Neurobiology
Wayne State University
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