Phillips Stevens writes "Many of today's complementary or alternative systems of healing involve magical beliefs, manifesting ways of thinking based in principles of cosmology and causality that are timeless and absolutely universal. So similar are some of these principles among all human populations that some cognitive scientists have suggested that they are innate to the human species, and this suggestion is being strengthened by current scientific research..." Some of the principles of magical beliefs described above are evident in currently popular belief systems. A common example is homeopathy; the fundamental principle of its founder, Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843), similia similibus curentur ("let likes cure likes"), in which it is supposed as an explicit expression of a magical principle, of the sort called sympathetic magic by Sir James Frazer's The Golden Bough.

Any scientific analysis of magical claims will be dogged by problems related to causality, coincidence and statistical validity.

Personal experience

When looking at the possible effects that magical thinking or actions may have purely on the individual concerned, science needs to be most careful. Issues related to self-confidence and other psychological influences on a person's body, mind or behaviour can be very complex. It is very difficult to entirely discount possibilities that magical thinking is capable of having quite profound and measurable effects on the practitioner him or herself.

Self-fulfilling prophecy, including the placebo effect, is an example of this in practice.

Interpersonal magic

When magical thinking and actions are meant or supposed to act on people other than the practitioner many are more skeptical, but again care must be taken before this is dismissed out of hand. In a social situation where magical beliefs are held in common between a group of individuals, and those around the practitioner are aware, or could become aware, or even could suspect, that magical processes are taking place that are meant to influence them, their luck or the outcome of their endeavours, it is easy to extend the argument above to see how this could, in fact, become so. Again the complexity of a person's view of themselves and the world and the intricacies of the relationship between mind, body and a person's actions are not, and probably never will be mapped in complete detail by science.

When a purely scientific and causal analysis becomes so formidably complex as it does in the case of groups of people living and working together, some would argue that the terminology provided by some magical thinking actually becomes a reasonable alternative, acting as a shorthand or a form of notation for dealing with this complexity.

More closely related, looking to the world of sport for two examples we could cite a player noticing that their opponent is, or is not, wearing a known 'lucky' charm after a break in play. A cricket captain sitting in a certain seat in the pavilion watching his or her batsmen doing well may be thought ill-advised to stand up and sit somewhere else just as crucial balls are about to be bowled.