“Attention deficit treated with meditation,” “meditation relieves depression, pain,” “meditation reduces chocolate cravings” – these are just some of the medical claims for the benefits of meditation that I have written about in this blog. And these are just a small sample of the kinds of claims that have been made for meditation in the news media, in books, in blogs (most notably The Huffington Post) over the past couple of years. These stories provide hope and they get people to try meditation. But what if they are too good to be true? If meditation fails to make me more attentive, fails to make me happier, and fails to help me confront the chocolate stack in the Bookstore, should I give up on meditation?

These are precisely the concerns of neuroscientist, Assistant Professor of Medicine and Family Medicine, and director of the mind-in-body lab, at Brown University, Catherine Kerr. She is a practitioner of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and she has personally conducted scientific studies on the effects of MBSR on other practitioners. She is well acquainted with the benefits of meditation, as well as the so-called ‘scientifically proven benefits of meditation’ and she wants people to understand just how little (as well as how much) scientists know. Tricycle magazine editor, Linda Heuman recently interviewed Dr. Kerr for the Tricycle magazine blog and their conversation provides a counterweight for anyone who is thinking, “Wow, this news article makes meditation sound really impressive. I should give it a try.” You can find the interview at “Don’t Believe the Hype,” (Tricycle, Oct 1, 2014).