Criticism
Nearly all AK tests are subjective, relying solely on practitioner assessment of muscle response. Specifically, some studies have shown test-retest reliability, inter-tester reliability, and accuracy to have no better than chance correlations. Some skeptics have argued that there is no scientific understanding of the proposed underlying theory of a viscerosomatic relationship, and the efficacy of the modality is unestablished in some cases and doubtful in others. Skeptics have also dismissed AK as "quackery," "magical thinking," and a misinterpretation of the ideomotor effect. It has also been criticized on theoretical and empirical grounds, and characterized as pseudoscience. With only anecdotal accounts claiming to provide positive evidence for the efficacy of the practice, a review of peer-reviewed studies concluded that the "evidence to date does not support the use of for the diagnosis of organic disease or pre/subclinical conditions."
Read more about this topic: Applied Kinesiology
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“Like speaks to like only; labor to labor, philosophy to philosophy, criticism to criticism, poetry to poetry. Literature speaks how much still to the past, how little to the future, how much to the East, how little to the West.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)