I've Never Wanted to Topple a Pyramid Scheme So Badly!
the supposed science of Joe Dispenza
Set aside for a moment all of Joe Dispenza's questionable energetic tactics. Focus instead on what he would like to have us view as "the science." One does not need to believe in the energetic factors that he weaves into his retreats and meditations to spot this man for the charlatan that he is. You need look no further than the research paper that he is currently touting as groundbreaking. I hate to spoil it, but it is not.
What you're about to read is a guest post written by Jim Brouwer, my dad. As I was refreshing my takedown of Joe Dispenza's ideology and cult tactics, he was tearing apart a study by Dispenza and team titled "Meditation-induced bloodborne factors as an adjuvant treatment to COVID-19 disease," published October 2023.
The reason this disaster of a published study even matters is that it is the focus of Dispenza's recent media tour. Since the release of study at the end of 2023 and of SOURCE: It's Within You, the docu-infomercial that premiered on April 6, 2024, Dispenza has emphasized the "meditation study" in all of his podcast interviews, at least the numerous ones that I have viewed. He's pushing bad science to further his unsound methodologies and sell seats to his events. The research is presented as "validation" for the efficacy of his work when in reality it proves no such connection.
To put this into perspective, Dispenza is using it to substantiate false claims and correlations such as the following —
What we discovered in our research is that so many chronic health conditions go away — like stage four cancers, like blindness, like deafness, like Lupus, like Multiple Sclerosis, like Muscular Dystrophy, like spinal chord injuries, strokes, rare genetic disorders. I know that's hard for a lot of people to accept, but we have the data that shows it.
— Joe Dispenza, Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin | May 17, 2023
The data shows no such thing. Read on as Jim articulates the countless flaws in the methodologies and conclusions of this study as well as how Dispenza's web of lies extends behind the scenes to his research and the undisclosed conflicts of interest galore that funded it.
An In-Depth Review of Joe Dispenza’s Highly Questionable Study
a guest post by Jim Brouwer
The Premise of the Study
“Meditation-induced bloodborne factors as an adjuvant treatment to COVID-19 disease,” a study spearheaded by Dr Joe Dispenza and his team, sets out to, "Probe the relationship between meditation and COVID-19 disease and directly test the impact of meditation on the induction of a blood environment that modulates viral infection." Their specific focus is on Dispenza's Kundalini meditation methods in his 7 day week-long, paid retreats.
They claim that through meditation an individual can alter his or her blood chemistry to the point that it provides protection against the SARS-CoV-2 infection. While mediation may have beneficial qualities, the principle finding in this study — “Meditation can enhance resiliency to viral infection and may serve as a possible adjuvant therapy in the management of the COVID-19 pandemic” — turns out to be unsupported by their weak data and improperly controlled analysis.
Please note that “Dr Joe Dispenza” is not a typo. He omits the period from his prefix. Also note that “bloodborne” is their misspelling of blood-borne.
Preface: Reviewer Background
Fifty years ago, I took a class in Experimental Design as part of my undergraduate degree work in Behavioral Psychology and Statistical Analysis. It was one of my favorite courses with one of my all-time favorite professors, Dr. Rusty Campos. Halfway into the course, we were given the following assignment: Pick three experimental studies that were published in a peer reviewed journal, then point out their experimental design and statistical analysis flaws. As the assignment was announced, my classmates’ eyes glazed over. Our thoughts raced as to how difficult and time consuming this endeavor was going be. There were certainly better things to do over the weekend than to trudge through boring study after boring study in order to find their flaws.
Turned out, it was disturbingly easy. The real lesson behind the assignment was to point out that just because a paper gets published does not make it a valid study. Unfortunately, crappy experimental design and the shoddy application of statistical analysis is nothing new. Nor, as Dr Joe Dispenza’s ridiculous ‘study’ shows, has rigorous design or analysis gotten any better since the mid-seventies.
Having been equipped with the tools to both question and analyze things in college, it’s one of the most useful skills I picked up in my studies — thanks Rusty! I apply those skills to Dispenza’s work with the same enthusiasm I did in my assignment fifty years ago. (Before you ask, yes, I got an A, both on that report and in that course.) Spoiler alert, my comments here are limited to the specifics of this study’s horrible design and sloppy statistical analysis. I don’t address any of the author’s motives beyond the obvious fact that this paper was specifically designed to legitimatize Dispenza’s work and drive up his revenues.
As a final bit of prologue, I’d like to acknowledge and thank my professor friend who read both Dispenza’s study and the drafts of my analysis. Her guidance was exceedingly helpful in clarifying a number of points. I’ve taken the liberty of including some of her smart and pointed feedback (denoted by italicized paragraphs) as I literally couldn’t have said some things better myself. I should also mention that both of us believe there actually are multiple unknown mind/body relationships that are still not understood. We’re skeptics of this study’s findings, not of some of its more fundamental underlying concepts.
If you have any questions beyond what I’ve written, feed them through Libby, and I’ll do my best to answer them for you.
This Study’s Obtuse Abstract
In my considered opinion, this study draws incredibly feeble conclusions based on sloppy methods and highly questionable results. It falls alarmingly short of providing replicable evidence of any of the “groundbreaking” claims Dispenza repeatedly makes in his interviews and video appearances.
While the study itself jumps around in discussing a number of meditation related topics, Dispenza’s core claim is that the study proves that his meditation methods can change your blood chemistry in a way that can prevent or limit the effects of COVID. This study’s actual conclusion is that there is nothing that it can really conclude. Dispenza is a master manipulator who cherrypicks aspects of this study and talks about it as if it reveals wonders that it doesn’t.
The Setup (and a Missing Null-Hypothesis)
This study starts by conflating Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine with other “experimental compounds” and proposes that “many of these treatments result in more harm than overall benefit.” At least they didn’t attack Vitamin D! It further claims that, “No safe, effective, easily-applied approach with significant potential to limit initial infection or symptom severity has emerged.” The authors must have believed all of the conspiracy hype that Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine were neither safe nor effective. Dispenza always likes to first frame his solution against a contrasting backdrop of ‘fear this’ so that he can swoop in as the savior. As I stated, master manipulator.
The paper notes meditation has many health benefits but claims that nobody has tested creating new tissue and blood environments that enhance health and resilience. Not having researched what other studies exist, I don’t know how valid that position really is, though it seems unlikely. Essentially, their null-hypothesis (which is never properly stated) is that the Kundalini meditation methods in Dispenza’s workshops change blood chemistry in a way that inhibits COVID-19 to some extent. That’s a big claim that the study really doesn’t show, but boy does it dance around trying to convince you it did by delving into unrelated surveys and employing poorly applied statistical methods.
Methods and Results
Without any real explanation, this study is broken into two parts: a survey of some of Dispenza’s week-long (a full seven days) meditation workshop attendees and a separate blood work analysis based on a very small sample group of those attendees. Note that the title of the paper refers only to the later group.
Internet Survey
An online survey was sent to 22,459 individuals who had attended one of three seven-day meditation workshops hosted by Dispenza (referred to as retreats on his website). Only 2,844 individuals (12.7%) responded to that request, hailing from 49 states and 66 countries. That strikes me as an incredibly low response rate given how positively ‘life-changing and transformational’ Dispenza professes these week-long workshops to be.
Much of the respondents’ feedback, such as severity of COVID-19 short and long-term symptoms, was “self-assessed.” This means there were no meaningful standards by which responses were given. That alone throws any potential results into question on top of which it introduces unaccounted for response bias. Researchers also never took the time and effort to select true random participants. This introduces further bias into the study. They brush aside all of their methodology flaws stating that those shortcomings don’t effect the study’s core purpose. How does one take blood samples in an online survey? Why even report on this survey? The sole purpose of including it seems to be to serve as a shiny distraction as to how poor the study actually is.
The three week-long workshops hosted by Dispenza from which the study obtained participants took place 14 to 17 months apart in three vastly different locations — February 2020 in Indian Wells, April 2021 in Orlando, and July 2021 in Denver. COVID went through a number of mutations over this lengthy period and presented differently during the timeline of the pandemic. COVID’s ever-changing nature further scrambled any meaningful results as neither time nor the disease’s variant factors were taken into account or controlled for statistically.
The data analysis is highly questionable as the study doesn’t really go into any useful depth regarding the statistical analysis methods they used. It does reference several statistical methods that essentially provide the authors a way to fudge the numbers, which they do. That isn’t very scientific.
Professor Friend: The HUGE problem that jumped out for me was that their analysis was in the form of bivariate regression. Anyone who has taken Statistics 101 knows that you can’t draw any conclusions that way. I was shocked that they got it published with this poor level of analysis.
The authors spend an inordinate amount of time discussing geospatial data. The city, state, or country where respondents live is another factor that gets thrown into an analytic blender of bad practices. Lacking a sufficient number of respondents by location to run certain statistical tests, they group but don’t define which locations they blurred together in order to “ensure robust statistical analysis.” There is no discussion for how each state or country handled COVID protocols. In reality, these groupings only serve to further preclude any meaningful analysis — so much for striving for ‘robust’ science! We’re off to a very bad start.
Professor Friend: I thought that was a really weird way to divide the data. If they really thought that location might be a predictor of COVID health responses (for example, people living in sunny locations might be less prone to Vitamin D deficiency), then the more robust way to include that would be to have a multivariate regression that included geospatial variables.
As for the individual-based (as opposed to community-based) plots, I practically wanted to scream at them, “What about the confounding variables?!” For example, people who are experienced and frequent meditators are likely extremely health-conscious. So the fact that meditation is correlated with better COVID outcomes means absolutely nothing about meditation. The people on the right side of the plot may simply be more likely to be taking good supplements, eating a healthy diet, getting regular exercise, and doing other things that predispose them to stronger immunity.
For all of the effort to analyze the 2,844 respondents, the not-so-groundbreaking conclusion was “these data suggest that length of meditation practice may influence susceptibility and management of COVID-19.” The data only weakly suggests that, if you don’t apply any rigorous analysis. It is not surprising that nothing of real statistical importance could be culled from this ‘study’ given the shoddy survey design and self-reporting.
Professor Friend: It’s the sloppiest work I’ve ever seen. Like I said, I’m shocked that the journal allowed it through.
Blood Plasma Participants
The purpose of the inclusion of the participant online survey of 2,844 people isn’t even referenced in the title of the paper. So why include it? Possibly it’s because this study only included 111 actual blood draw participants. 43 were “experienced meditators” who had previously attended a Dispenza week-long workshop and had practiced meditation for six months or more. 45 were “novice meditators” who had practiced “the technique” (what technique isn’t defined) for less than six months and had not previously attended a Dispenza week-long workshop.
Six-plus months of meditation seems like a totally arbitrary point to consider a meditator to be “experienced.” Moving a subject from "novice" to "experienced" at six months plus one day obscures any meaningful group division. There will likely be extremely similar people in both segmentations, people who fall just above and below the cut-off, which means that the groups are likely not as different as the study claims.
No explanation of why they used that cut-off is offered — perhaps it’s because that’s how long it takes to become a proficient meditator, but perhaps it’s because they didn’t have enough long-term meditators for the sample. My suspicion is that there were too few "experienced" meditators to make that group of 43 statistically meaningful so they manipulated the data to fit their needs. If they wanted to be more scientific about the study, they should have provided further information about why they used that as the cut-off and also provided summary statistics about the mean length of meditation experience (and standard deviation) in each group to show that there were truly meaningful differences.
The 23 “controls” for the study were “vacation” subjects, who were "vacationing guests" traveling and staying with workshop attendees and supposedly had no meditation experience using Dispenza’s methods. These were, in fact, spouses of other week-long workshop attendees.
Professor Friend: Their use of vacationing spouses is a TERRIBLE way to construct a control sample. They don’t even give us descriptive or summary statistics about the three samples to try to convince us that they’re comparable. If the samples aren’t comparable, then the rest of the work crumbles. That’s the bedrock of experimental work.
With a total of 22,459 participants from the three distinct workshops, each a week long, only 88 (0.39%) of Dispenza’s retreat attendees volunteered to have their blood drawn for this ‘groundbreaking’ study. Why there were so few participants is a discussion for another day. The study assures us that both male and females subjects were used “to ensure scientific rigor and reproducibility.” This entire paper is laced with such drivel and reassuring platitudinal language. I file such unnecessary comments under — if you have to tell me you’re important, you’re not important. There is no “scientific rigor” here.
Blood was collected before and after each of the week-long long meditation retreats. The first samples were actually taken in February of 2020 at the Indian Wells retreat. These samples predate the the widespread existence of COVID. This paper also noted that these samples also predate the concept of this study itself by over one year. The crux of this paper is to validate the notion that Dispenza’s meditation workshops or retreats (the study calls them both) actually provide a positive impact on health and defend against COVID-19 in particular. The results are less than overwhelming.
Professor Friend: For example, looking at panel E of Figure 2, to me it looks like there are considerable differences in the starting points of the meditator samples and the control sample. It’s true that across a bunch of different measures, there looks like there’s a stronger pre- and post-workshop difference in the experienced meditators, but since they didn’t have the same starting point, they’re really not comparable. Also, I don’t have any confidence in attributing the differences to meditation because we just don’t know all the ways that the samples could be differing during that time period. They could be eating very different food, the vacationers could be engaged in unhealthy activity during the same period, etc.
In short, the research design is so bad that I would fail a graduate student if they turned this crap in to me. For the survey to have validity, they needed strong statistical analysis. For the experimental work to have validity, they needed strong sample construction (backed up with summary stats). They failed on both counts. They failed so outrageously badly — especially on the survey analysis — that it feels deceptive to me.
Given that there is noticeable improvement for a large number of the "control subjects" (which they avoid discussing), their methods and analysis feels deceptive to me too!
Study Discussion & Conclusion
Rather than closing with a strong, definitive statement that Dispenza’s retreats provide clear results, the authors give themselves more cover by stating, “Mind-body practices such as meditation have long been known to lead to a host of health benefits, including improvements in the stress response as well as immunity.” They then make claims that they’ve shown, “a strong correlation between the length of meditation practice and the ability to limit COVID-19 disease and morbidity. Additionally, we show that meditation can lead to changes in the blood environment, including factors that afford protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection.” Did they? I see no such evidence.
We’ve all learned that correlation does not equal causality. There is nothing in this study that jumps off the page proclaiming Dispenza’s Kundalini meditation methods do, in fact, prove statistically significant to the point of drawing a hard conclusion that it changed blood chemistry or had a positive health impact on COVID. They themselves admit to this point in the lengthy final paragraph of the discussion section citing, “several limitations [of the study] must be noted.” Finally a glimmer of honesty. Here are their admissions that their study is lacking any teeth —
First: Just as my professor friend and I pointed out before even reaching this section, there was no control over the participants’ dietary, rest, or workout habits. The study itself notes that while at the retreat “the assumption was made that all subjects ate a similar diet,” then acknowledges participants could easily vary their diet within the choice of foods offered. There was zero control over (or apparently a desire on the part of the authors to study) the subjects’ diets prior to the retreat. Therefore there was no control over pre- or post-retreat blood plasma variables. It's plausible that any "positive results" in this study are solely attributable to the diet that was available to participants while at the retreat. The marked improvement of numerous control subjects suggests that possibility, but nobody knows for certain because this and other important variables were never accounted for.
Second: When blood samples are drawn, it is standard medical practice that the subject will have fasted some 8 to 12 hours before the draw. This is done to eliminate digestion related spikes in the results. The samples in this study were drawn a mere 30 minutes after eating — and the authors have the audacity to call that a “30-min fast.” Remember, these are supposedly serious scientists we’re talking about here. I never realized that I scientifically ‘fast’ several times a day — good for me!
Third: They note that, “Variables such as age, obesity, overall health, lifestyle, socioeconomic status, and pre-existing health conditions can influence the severity of COVID-19 disease,” as if this is news. They then acknowledged that such factors could also play a role in the effectiveness of meditation itself, another factor for which they clearly failed to control or take into account.
Lastly: While claiming that their study demonstrates that Dispenza’s intensely immersive (and pricey) week-long experience leads to significant changes in blood plasma, they acknowledge that, “It remains unclear whether other mind-body practices would yield similar results.” Shocking news!
After all of the flowery clinical and technobabble verbiage, pseudo-statistical analysis, and excuses for this poorly designed bit of ‘research,’ the authors can only suggest that, "Regular meditation practice has the potential to improve wellbeing and develop a healthy state through modulation of biological processes.” Not "does," not "will," but "has the potential" to do so. This is the "groundbreaking" wonder-study that Dispenza constantly hawks as life changing?
As my professor friend so smartly concludes —
Professor Friend: I would have been very interested in a robust study about how meditation affects COVID outcomes! There’s all kinds of interesting research on the epigenetic effects of meditation, so it’s plausible to me that it could improve immune functioning in a way that would help prevent infection or boost recovery. But they do such a crummy and deceptive job with this analysis that I don’t think we can take anything away from it.
Postscript Analysis — Glaring Conflicts of Interest
Before you think we’re done with analyzing this paper, there’s actually more to the story. Playing fast and loose with ‘science,’ Dispenza touts this study as something special. It’s actually worse than bad science. Somehow this clearly biased paper snuck under the publisher’s radar. Let’s look behind the Wizard of Oz-like curtain of deception Dispenza et al have hung in order to hide some damning facts.
The Authors
The study only lists a limited profile of each author’s professional, business, or university affiliation. The "Author Contributions" section obscurely reports each of their contributions to the paper, hidden behind a dizzying display of initials. As you’ll see, there is much, much more that should have been disclosed.
This study was supposedly "conceived and designed" by three authors —
Hemal H. Patel, Professor and Vice-Chair for Research in the Department of Anesthesiology at University of California, San Diego funded by the Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System
Tobias Moeller-Bertman, Chief Executive Officer of VitaMed Research
Joe Dispenza, Owner of Encephalon
The "first authorship" was shared by Juan P. Zuniga-Hertz and Ramamurthy Chitteti, both affiliated with the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of California, San Diego (same as Patel). Contributions from the other authors range from minimal to quite major. For example, Michelle Poirier of VitaMed Research drafted the manuscript, critically reviewed it, and prepared the final version. The participation of other authors raises questions as to how much of this study is actually attributable to UCSD. Dispenza certainly wants you to think it is in its entirety.
13 of the authors are connected to University of California, San Diego (UCSD), 3 with VitaMed Research, 1 with San Diego State University, and 3 (including Dispenza) with Encephalon, the parent company that orchestrates these week-long meditation workshop retreats. On its face, it might first appear that these are all arm's-length relationships — but let’s pull back that Oz-like curtain.
In yet another flowery comment that would be considered totally unnecessary in a serious study, it is specifically noted that Dispenza himself “critically reviewed the manuscript.” Not just your run of the mill independent review mind you. No, no — the lead beneficiary of any positive outcome of this study critically reviewed it himself! No bias here — oh wait, what’s that? Yes there is.
The Funding: Always Follow the Money!
While the paper acknowledges the nonprofits Give to Give Foundation and InnerScience Research Funds for their support, it doesn’t disclose anything about either organization. Doing some cursory searching revealed that in May of 2023, InnerScience gave UCSD $10 million to fund a study of meditation to combat disease. Doing a quick review of their websites and Form 990 filings reveals why they kept details hidden.
InnerScience Research Fund, located in Yelm, WA, is actually a dba of Give to Research, headed by Andrew Wright. (Yelm is also hometown of Ramtha School of Enlightenment and only fifteen minutes from Encephalon, Inc.)
In Dispenza’s recent movie, SOURCE: It’s Within You (an infomercial under the guise of a documentary), Wright is revealed as a prominent figure. The movie only refers to him as a Senior Advisor at InnerScience Research. This purposefully avoids fully disclosing that Wright is also InnerScience’s paid President.
It also isn’t disclosed in this paper that Encephalon employee Dr. Hillari Hamilton is the Director of Donor Relations at InnerScience! The first of many conflict of interest alarm sirens are just starting to sound. (See 2023 Form 990 for InnerScience Research Fund for details.)
Another key fact not disclosed in SOURCE or the study is how deeply Wright is involved with Encephalon. He is contracted as its event producer through his own company, New Leaf Media Group, where he serves as CEO and is presumably the sole owner. The listing of Encephalon on the business site Datanyze describes Wright as Technical Director under the heading “Encephalon Executive Team & Key Decision Makers.” So it appears that Wright is a direct Encephalon employee as well!
In SOURCE, Wright takes pride in joining the Encephalon team in 2013 to create the settings and environment for Dispenza’s week-long retreats. Wright also boasts that he “helped facilitate the event” in a manner that would “help people surrender.” That doesn’t sound very ‘scientific’ to my ears, but let’s keep focused on the conflict of interest in this study instead of the cult-like tactics. That said, it should be noted that SOURCE is proudly promoted as “Powered by InnerScience Research Fund,” the organization where Wright serves as President and Senior Advisor. What a small, small, self-serving web this truly is.
On Wright’s LinkedIn profile, he acknowledges his deep ties to Dispenza’s workshops. In fact, he boasts that, “I'm grateful to be part of an amazing team of people who travel the world producing week-long events for thousands of participants. As technical director for these events I oversee everything in the main venue including audio, video, lighting, projection, and staging... but my passion is supporting the participants in their transformation.” This alone raises serious questions as to why InnerScience Research’s or Wright’s deeply conflicted relationship with Dispenza’s primary work isn’t fully disclosed in the study.
An interesting side note about the InnerScience Research donation of $10 million to UCSD is that it came during the period of time that this ‘ground-breaking paper’ was being revised after first being submitted to the publisher. To me, that has an unavoidable ‘influencey’ smell that clearly could have impacted the study’s reported results.
It is unclear as to what other specific research (if any) at UCSD the $10 million donation funded or might fund, but it is concerning that InnerScience lists Patel and Moeller-Bertram (the two creators of this study) as the only Research Partners on their website.
Far from being an arm's-length relationship, InnerScience Research Fund serves as a connective link between UCSD, New Leaf Media, and Dispenza’s Encephalon company. There's even a designated company in place to forge this connection. As described on InnerScience's secondary About Page of their website, "Dr Joe Dispenza’s company, Metamorphosis LLC, is collecting data at his events around the globe and sending the samples to the research team at UC San Diego. InnerScience funds the analysis of the data which leads to peer-reviewed research papers in scientific journals. This allows us to bring Dr Joe’s work to the world through the language of science." In essence, InnerScience exists solely to fund and further Dispenza's work.
Furthermore, by becoming a monthly donor to InnerScience, you receive "an exclusive guided meditation from Dr Joe Dispenza" and the opportunity to win "a weeklong retreat with Dr Joe!" InnerScience also hosts “intimate, collaborative, fundraising-focused event[s]” with “Dr. Joe Dispenza and the UCSD Research Team” without disclosing the recipient(s) of the donations or what they are funding. Why would you think there might be a conflict of interest here?
Clearly Wright has direct and major influence in all four bodies! If this looks like a closed loop specifically designed to generate income for Encephalon (Dispenza) and New Leaf Media (Wright), you’re getting a clear picture of what is happening. The conflict of interest sirens are now blaring, and they are about to get louder.
Based in New York, NY, the Give to Give Foundation’s website is heavily focused on Dispenza and his work. They disclose that they were founded in 2015, “Inspired initially by the work of New York Times best-selling author, researcher, and lecturer Dr Joe Dispenza.” It was founded by Dispenza’s retreat attendees to provide scholarships for those who could otherwise not attend them. Why doesn’t Encephalon just offer hardship discounts or scholarships? They certainly could afford to do that as each workshop retreat generates millions. Why create a nonprofit that filters money to a for-profit company that clearly doesn’t need the financial help?
What isn’t disclosed is that Encephalon employee Dr. Hillari Hamilton is listed as one of the Directors of Give to Give during the same years that the study was underway. Additionally, two out of three "Mission Partners" on Give to Give's website are companies owned by Dispenza, Encephalon (listed as Unlimited) and NeuroChangeSolutions.
Well intentioned or not, we have another heavily biased third party actor creating another closed loop between Give to Give, UCSD, and Encephalon — same pattern, same purpose.
Both InnserScience Research Fund and Give to Give Foundation appear to be legitimate 501(c)3 charitable nonprofit organizations, until you look at their almost singular focus on Encephalon selling Dispenza’s pricey retreats. Taking a more skeptical look at them suggests they act more like shell companies specifically designed to funnel money to Encephalon than genuine nonprofit organizations. Hmmm.
The Blatant Conflicts of Interest
As noted on the bottom of page 11 of the study under the heading "Declaration of competing interest" it states, “Dr. Joe Dispenza’s company, Encephalon, runs the meditation retreats. All other authors have no conflicts of interest.” Really? The authors and/or publisher far too gently admit to a glaring conflict of interest with Dispenza, but we’re supposed to overlook blatant conflict of interest issues with most of the other authors, including Wright, the man who produces these retreats and runs the nonprofit that helped fund the study and gifted $10 million to UCSD?
While some may argue these authors are simply the recipients of study donations, one would anticipate a far more rigorous examination and disclosure of the surrounding funding facts for the study and the entirety of where these authors work. The observable lack of full disclosure regarding the overlap of funding organizations and which people are involved with which organizations leaves the uneasy, and far too plausible feeling, that key facts are being purposely hidden. Examining competing interests from the authors raises numerous unanswered questions. 13 of the study’s authors, including the two first authors, Zluniga-Hertz and Chitteti, and one of the two study designers, Patel, work at UCSD. These are beneficiaries of the uniquely ‘Dispenza focused’ charitable funds from InnerScience and Give to Give, with whom Dispenza has a less than an arm’s length relationship.
Two of the authors of this paper, Hillari Hamilton and Carla Stanton, work directly for Dispenza’s company Encephalon. Buried in the Author Contributions paragraph, where only initials are used, is the fact that these two designed the survey. As pointless to this paper as that survey is, you’d think that would be considered a conflict of interest for these additional authors, just as it is declared for Dispenza himself — but the publisher apparently doesn’t appear to think so. Wow!
In addition to author Hillari Hamilton being listed as working at Encephalon, not divulged is the fact that she is also the Director of Donor Relations for InnerScience Research Fund and was the Director at Give to Give Foundation in 2021 and 2022, during the time that this study was conducted. (See 2021 Form 990 and 2022 Form 990 for Give to Give for details.) These are the only listed funders of this research (other than the ill-defined Veterans Affairs connection to Patel). Hamilton's another player with feet in multiple camps. In the opinion of the authors or journal, her multiple involvements don’t appear to be in conflict either. Triple WOW! Wait — there’s more!
Tobias Moeller-Bertram, one of the two authors who designed this study, is head of VitaMed Research. As acknowledged in the study, VitaMed was paid to do all of the clinical type of work (i.e. blood draws). Moeller-Bertram's LinkedIn profile also notes that since June 2023 (while this paper was still being revised) he started as an Associate Professor, Voluntary – Department of Anesthesia, UCSD. It also lists him as Principal Investigator, Encephalon Inc. starting in June of 2021. This study wasn’t even conceived at arm’s length! Is “Principle Investigator, Encephalon Inc.” a paid position? At this point it almost doesn't matter since the conflicts are so pervasive.
The bond between seven of the authors (including Dispenza) and Encephalon are revealed even more clearly in SOURCE. The designers of this study, Moeller-Bertram & Patel, are featured predominantly throughout the video. Stanton, Hamilton, Bonds, Poirier, and of course Dispenza appear repeatedly. Keep in mind that SOURCE is primarily a promotional video designed to sell Dispenza’s meditation week-long workshops. To validate the effectiveness of these retreats, Dispenza keeps pointing to this ‘research’ and the validity of the study.
While Dr. Ruth Waterman isn’t listed as an author in the study, she is Chair of the Department of Anesthesiology at UCSD (the recipient of InnerScience Research’s $10 million donation) and appears multiple times throughout SOURCE. Apparently her role was to validate Dispenza’s work by bootstrapping it to UCSD’s prestige. Seems like a conflict of interest to me, or is that just the way department heads help secure further research funding?
Where there is supposed to be an arm’s length, zero conflict of interest relationship, we find multiple closed loops of friendly overlapping activity that are clearly designed to validate, and thereby promote, Dispenza’s paid retreats — thereby generating profit for Encephalon. I will be contacting the publisher of this paper to explore why it only lists Dispenza as having a clear conflict of interest when it is blatantly evident that multiple others do as well — including the two funding organizations.
My Opinionated Conclusion
While my analysis of this ‘study’ went into greater detail, this exchange between Dean Yeager and Dr. Venkman in Ghostbusters provides an incredibly concise and accurate abstract. It’s as if Dean Yeager applied his knowledge of quantum physics to time travel from 1984 into our present just to scold Dr Joe Dispenza! Dean Yeager’s dressing down of Dr. Venkman (substitute Dispenza for Venkman) is fascinatingly spot on and wholly appropriate!
Dr. Venkman: But the kids love us.
Dean Yeager: Dr. Venkman, we believe that the purpose of science is to serve mankind. You however seem to regard science as some kind of dodge, or hustle. Your theories are the worst kind of popular tripe; your methods are sloppy; and your conclusions are highly questionable. You are a poor scientist, Dr. Venkman.
Dr. Venkman: I see.
This Ghostbusters clip really does a great job of summing up both Dispenza and this ‘study.’ Put as much lipstick on this pig of a paper as you want — it is still junk science.
Show Me the Money!
Keep in mind that Encephalon Inc., owned byDr Joe Dispenza, is a revenue driven business. If the pricy retreats and exhaustive list of items available in the online shop don’t convince you that it is first and foremost a business, consider this —
In several places on Dispenza’s site they promote “Coherence Healing™.” Put aside all of his ‘coherence’ nonsense and focus on the “™” that is used. Businesses use this trademark symbol for a specific purpose — to lay claim on a word or phrase. From a legal perspective, ™ means, “It’s mine, you can’t use it.” It is the first step toward obtaining a Registered Trademark ® which then allows a business to take legal action against transgressors of the trademark’s use. This is a business practice it appears Dispenza picked up from his seventeen years of study at Ramtha School of Enlightenment when he was deeply involved as a student and teacher.
If Dispenza really wanted to openly share the ‘magic’ of Coherence Healing™, there would be no need to trademark it. You can buy facial tissue from numerous manufacturers, but you can only purchase Kleenex™ brand tissues from its owner, Kimberly-Cark. Want some Coherence Healing™? Then you have to pony up and pay Dispenza, just like you have to pay for just about everything else he offers. First and foremost, it is a revenue driven business. Encephalon, owned by Dr Joe Dispenza, has every earmark of a hustle.
Need more convincing that Dispenza is all about selling something to you? Go to his website and click the ubiquitous spyglass search icon. On just about every website these days such a search tool lets you hunt for a variety of things — people, key words, contact information, etc. Not so with Dr Joe’s site. There ‘search’ only means “Search Products” — nothing else.
Just like they say in all of those infomercials — but wait, there’s more! Dispenza, Encephalon, and InnerScience are pushing the infomercial masquerading as a documentary SOURCE like there’s no tomorrow. Want to watch this ‘very important’ video? Grab your wallet first because it will cost you $15 to rent it for 48 hours, $30 to own it, or $79 with extra footage.
Alternatively, you could sign up to be part of the SOURCE Affiliate Program where you can make 50% on any of the viewing purchases! On its promotional website Dispenza wants to deceive viewers into thinking, “Together, we can raise awareness and drive change.” SOURCE is really designed to raise Encephalon’s revenues and drive expensive seminar attendance. Change my mind!
If you follow the money, almost everything is designed to drive event attendance. All the convoluted talk and made-up terms mean little. If you really want to become ‘enlightened,’ you need to attend a seminar, ideally multiple. Give to Give and InnerScience Research funded this disaster of a study. Entangled Encephalon advocates designed it. Last but not least, UCSD was leveraged (a cynic would suggest ‘paid’) in an attempt to lend the study some legitimacy. This work full of sloppy methods and highly questionable results is used by Dispenza in a lame attempt to substantiate his theoretical nonsense in order to promote his business interests.
Can meditation lead to all sorts of positive outcomes? Certainly. Does Dispenza’s ‘study’ prove anything extraordinary. Nope. Sadly, that isn’t stopping Dispenza from touting this ‘research’ (cough, gag — almost lost it) in all of his recent interviews as validation for his ‘amazing’ work.
Don’t let Dispenza’s Wizard of Oz curtain fool you. There’s nothing real behind it. Is there a hidden price to pay beyond Dispenza’s hefty seminar fees? I believe there is, and Libby has a bunch more to discuss about Dispenza’s work and purposely hidden motives.
Here ends part two of the three part series on Joe Dispenza. Stay tuned. There’s more to come.
