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The core message of Altered Traits is important: meditation (especially the type known as Mindfulness-Based Stressreduction) can help you, but beware of the hype. Richie Davidson runs the gold standard lab for studying the neuroscience of meditation (at my home institution, the University of Wisconsin-Madison) and he's absolutely rigorous in his approach to the claims made for meditation as a cure for more or less everything. One of the valuable things about Altered Traits is its breakdown of what separates meaningful studies from advertising: control groups and the research design that separates variables are crucial. It's still early in what will be a long-term game; as recently as the late 1970s there were effectively no reliable studies of meditation. But several conclusions seem clear: meditation can help manage stress, deal with chronic pain, slow signs of brain aging, improve attention. It probably can't deal with underlying medical conditions (but it can improve the quality of life for those who have to deal with them.) There are some core ambiguities remaining, one of the most important being that the current studies can't define what impacts come from which type of meditation--mindfulness, loving-kindness meditation, or the more advanced forms practiced by Yogis who have mediated tens of thousands of hours.

But it is clear that meditation, practiced consistently, can transform "states" of being into "traits", states of mind that are present even when you're not meditating.

Altered Traits is deeply grounded in science, but it's not written with a scientific audience in mind. Goleman (a science writer and long-time friend of Davison) describes the scientific issues raised, but provides very little detail on the research, preferring to summarize conclusions. If you want more of the detail, you can find it in Evan Thompson's Waking, Dreaming, Being.