ShortBridge
3rd Black Belt
I see your point and I agree to an extent, but only to the point that it might improve your fitness or flexibility.(which definitely falls more to the boon side of things)
I'd also say my wording may have been a bit harsh, I don't think every person teaching combat without combat is intentionally deceiving people as per what they are selling, Many if not most probably believe it themselves too.
I can say with earnest that I've yet to meet anyone that has been trained this way that has been able to use it when it counts, in a way that works.
I see that you missed this thread, which contains exactly the type of evidence that you say you are lacking.
Self Defense from rape
It is a real story about a real person who's training was tested in a potentially life and death circumstance this year a few miles from my house. Not that I expect it will change your worldview one bit. You believe in what you do, you're surrounded by people and postings that confirm that belief and you look down upon the poor, misguided rest of the world, including the lady in this article, who if we're all honest wouldn't last one round in the octagon with Chuck Liddell.
If you are interested in getting out of your echo chamber of confirmation bias on the very complex problem of personal safety, there are other examples to be found, this one just happened to be local to me, so I didn't have to go looking for it.
There are some other good sources of advice, complete with some "evidence" that an interested party might want to check out. The book "Strong on Defense" by Sanford Strong, for example. My copy is loaned out right now, but used copies can be found on eBay. If you were teaching people to follow your training path to personal saftey and didn't want to be (un)intentionally deceiving them, you might also check out "The Gift of Fear" by Gavin de Becker. Those two books and NO TRAINING, in my opinion, may well make certain people safer than 5 days a week of sparring.
Or stick to the same argument and keep assuming that you know the one truth and everyone else is delusional. You'll get some likes from your people and might even influence a few others, while pissing off the rest of us, but what difference does that make, we're all brain washed snake oil salesman anyway, right?