Reception of the idea[edit]

An editor has expressed a concern that this section lends undue weight to certain ideas relative to the article as a whole. Please help to discuss and resolve the dispute before removing this message. (January 2013) Skeptical Inquirer magazine criticized the lack of falsifiability and testability of these claims.
[5]

Critics have

asserted that the evidence provided is usually anecdotal and that, because of the self-selecting nature of the positive reports, as well as the subjective nature of any results, these reports are susceptible to confirmation bias and selection bias.
[17]

Physicist Ali Alousi, for instance, criticized it as unmeasurable

[1]

and questioned the likelihood that thoughts can affect anything outside the head.
[18]

The Law of Attraction has been popularized in recent years by books and films such as The Secret. This film and the subsequent book use interviews with New Thought authors and speakers to explain the principles of the proposed metaphysical law that one can attract anything that one thinks about consistently. Writing for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, Mary Carmichael and Ben Radford wrote that "neither the film nor the book has any basis in scientific reality", and that its premise contains "an ugly flipside: if you have an accident or disease, it's your fault."
[5]

Others have questioned the references to modern scientific theory, and have maintained, for example, that the law of attraction misrepresents the electrical activity of brainwaves. implausible effects, believing these to be traits of modern pseudoscience.
[19]

Victor Stenger and Leon

Lederman are critical of attempts to use quantum mysticism to bridge any unexplained or seemingly
[20][21][22]