One pretty basic and sensible criticism, an example of many:
The Law of Attraction . . . claims that all you need to do is to think about the things that you want in your life and the ‘Universe’ will supply them in abundance – whether they are positive or negative. So if you think about money you will get money; if you focus on your debts you will stay in debt. If you think about being slim you will become slim whereas if you constantly worry about how fat you are you will stay fat. Unfortunately for the proponents of this ‘law’ there is no scientific evidence to support it. There are plenty of anecdotes from people who believe the law worked for them but for each of these stories there are many other possible explanations. No one has carried out a controlled experiment showing that the so-called law actually works.
. . . The law implies that whatever difficulties you have in life are the result of you thinking the wrong thoughts. So it appears that an abused child, a rape victim or a prisoner in a concentration camp was somehow to blame because they thought negative thoughts. This is offensive to victims and flies in the face of common sense.
The appeal of the LoA lies in its lazy proposition. You do not need hard work and discipline to lose weight or get rich – you can do it by thinking. Unfortunately this just is not true. The LoA is delusional. It is dangerous because it misleads people into believing that imagery alone will work without action. To succeed in life you need things like talent, diligence, persistence, skills, hard-work and maybe a little luck. You can achieve great things – but in order to do so you have to do a lot more than just think about them.
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/the-law-of-attraction-is-a-dangerous-delusion.html
The only people who have demonstrably benefited from this nonsense are the snake-oil salesmen who came up with it.
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