have found little difference between mindfulness interventions and control groups, though they did also indicate that their intervention group was treated too briefly for the research to be conclusive. In some domains, such as sport, a lack of internal validity across studies prevents any strong claims being made about the effects of mindfulness. These studies also list the need for more robust research investigations. Several issues pertaining to the assessment of mindfulness have also been identified including the current use of self-report questionnaires. Potential for bias also exists to the extent that researchers in the field are also practitioners and possibly subject to pressures to publish positive or significant results. Various scholars have criticized how mindfulness has been defined or represented in recent Western psychology publications. These modern understandings depart significantly from the accounts of mindfulness in early Buddhist texts and authoritative commentaries in the Theravada and Indian Mahayana traditions. Adam Valerio has introduced the idea that conflict between academic disciplines over how mindfulness is defined, understood, and popularly presented may be indicative of a personal, institutional, or paradigmatic battle for ownership over mindfulness, one where academics, researchers, and other writers are invested as individuals in much the same way as religious communities. Shortcomings The popularization of mindfulness as a "commodity" has been criticized, being termed "McMindfulness" by some critics. According to John Safran, the popularity of mindfulness is the result of a marketing strategy: "McMindfulness is the marketing of a constructed dream; an idealized lifestyle; an identity makeover." The psychologist Thomas Joiner argues that modern mindfulness meditation has been "corrupted" for commercial gain by self-help celebrities, and suggests that it encourages unhealthy narcissistic and self-obsessed mindsets. According to Purser and Loy, mindfulness is not being used as a means to awaken to insight in the "unwholesome roots of greed, ill will and delusion," but reshaped into a "banal, therapeutic, self-help technique" that has the opposite effect of reinforcing those passions. While mindfulness is marketed as a means to reduce stress, in a Buddhist context it is part of an all-embracing ethical program to foster "wise action, social harmony, and compassion." The privatization of mindfulness neglects the societal and organizational causes of stress and discomfort, instead propagating adaptation to these circumstances. According to Bhikkhu Bodhi, "[A]bsent a sharp social critique, Buddhist practices could easily be used to justify and stabilize the status quo, becoming a reinforcement of consumer capitalism." The