PONE-D-25-15885Brief Mindfulness Coaching Enhances Selective Attention in Medical Scientists: A Pilot StudyPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Jaiswal,

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Dear Editor,

Thanks for the opportunity to submit my review report titled “Brief Mindfulness Coaching Enhances Selective Attention in Medical Scientists: A Pilot Study “the hypothesis that brief mindfulness coaching (three 1.5-hour online group sessions over 12 weeks) can benefit medical scientists”

Here are my comments: The authors have included a section that captures detailed power analysis procedures conducted to arrive at a sample size of 43. Therefore, the study is powered to test the proposed hypothesis.

The intervention and control groups have been clearly defined, and detailed highlights of how the intervention group benefitted from the Brief Mindfulness Coaching have been provided.

Statistical Analysis: The use of the Chi-square test of independence for assessing associations between two categorical variables (gender and ethnicity), especially when most of the expected frequencies were less than 5 from Table 1, was not appropriate. Ideally, Fisher's Exact test would have been better. Using a non-parametric Wilcoxon rank sum test for age comparisons between intervention and control groups was appropriate, but the authors should include why the non-parametric approach was adopted. Was it because there was a violation of normality and equal variance assumption required for a parametric two-sample t-test for age? How they tested for normality and equal variance is also missing under the Demographic characteristics section. They can equally provide a summary of how key statistical assumptions were tested to cater for all variables.

Please add a section called outcome measures (primary and secondary outcome measures) to provide proper context for the choice of statistical methods. You lumped all of them under data analysis. Kindly titled them outcome measures

The use of repeated measure ANOVA and Kruskal Wallis tests were appropriate.

My major concern. This is an intervention study, but the results presented in Tables 2 and 3 do not show the intervention's true effect. Authors only presented pre-post for intervention and control groups, but the true effect size, which is a difference in difference, was not presented, making it difficult to determine the true effect of the intervention. That is the change in the intervention group minus the change in the control, including the corresponding confidence interval, would represent the true effect size, which is the difference in differences estimate.

Reviewer #2: Thank you for the opportunity to review this manuscript. The focus on supporting medical scientists, who are often under significant cognitive and emotional demands, through an abbreviated mindfulness intervention is both timely and important. The integration of EEG-based cognitive assessments alongside self-reported outcomes adds scientific rigor to the work, particularly in evaluating selective attention changes.

That said, several aspects of the manuscript would benefit from further clarification and refinement to enhance its clarity, coherence, and impact. The rationale for the intervention design—including selection and ordering of mindfulness practices—could be made more explicit, and the use of extensive terms and quotations from external sources could be streamlined to improve readability. There is real potential here to contribute meaningfully to the literature on mindfulness interventions in high-stress training environments. With improved structural clarity and a more grounded theoretical justification for intervention components, this manuscript could be a valuable contribution to the field.

I appreciate the authors’ thoughtful engagement with this important topic and look forward to future developments in this line of work. Please see the attached comments.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: additional_reviewer_comments.pdf

Brief Mindfulness Coaching Enhances Selective Attention in Medical Scientists: A Pilot Study

PONE-D-25-15885R1

Dear Dr. Jaiswal,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Editor comment: The two reviewers have now evaluated your revised manuscript. As you can see from their comments, both consider the paper ready for publication. They confirm that all previously raised issues have been addressed satisfactorily. R2 suggests a few minor corrections. I believe these can be implemented during the final preparation phase and do not require a further round of review. I am therefore pleased to accept your manuscript for publication. Congratulations on this outcome. 

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Michael B. Steinborn, PhD

Section Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: All my previous comments have been duly addressed by the authors. They also provided further clarification where necessary.

Reviewer #2: Thank you for your thoughtful and comprehensive revisions in response to my initial feedback. I appreciate the care taken to clarify the intervention rationale, streamline terminology, and better define methodological components such as the use of EEG and participant grouping. The manuscript is now much clearer and more cohesive.

I have just a few remaining points for clarification or consideration before finalizing:

1. Table Mapping Practices to Outcomes

Thank you for elaborating on the rationale for not including a table linking mindfulness practices to targeted outcomes. I understand your concern regarding oversimplification, and the revised text provides helpful context. That said, even a brief summary figure or schematic—indicating general outcome domains (e.g., attention, emotion regulation)—might support reader understanding while preserving nuance.

2. Novelty of EEG Use

The inclusion of EEG-based cognitive assessments is a strength of this study. To further underscore the contribution, consider framing the novelty of this application more explicitly.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean? ). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy .

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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