I've expressed my feelings about ma being ,faith based rather than sciences based before. the reality of fighting is its science, as such you must be able to prove that something works and be able to quantify its effectiveness against known variables. Here is a limit to how far you can take that with out some study and a lab but certainly you can critically assess the techneque and classify it by reliability, effectiveness and by consequence if it fails.
clearly all techniques will work against some people, the old, the chronic unfit, the blind, but you need to be,a bit more discerning than that, before you put faith in it and at least envisage some average strong fit healthy person as an adversary , if a techneque isn't very reliable, very effective and low risk against that class of person, ie most people, then all your dedication has made you no better than average.
I'm old being average is a good standard for me and that's why i do ma, to keep my self above average, techniques that don't do that are no use to me