Good posts IF and Bacon. There's a lot of merit to what you're saying. I definitely agree that if somebody is only conditioning IB and not practicing actual fighting technique, they will be a worse fighter than somebody who is training to fight. But to IF's point, that's because IB is a form of conditioning to enhance the technique, not the technique itself.

Being a science guy, I'm with Bacon in that I'd love to see some empirical studies done in an actual IB regimen. I think we all would. However I don't see that happening any time soon. The closest thing we have is evidence of Wolff's law. So in the mean time for those looking for evidence, you'll have to find somebody who has conditioned for 5, 10, 20+ years and cross hands with them. Not to see if you can best them in a fight, but rather to see how it feels when you get blocked by them or they attack you. Report back here when you've done that.