Isn't someone out there marketing a $1000 tester for this purpose?
I am not aware of a method to check circuit breaker function with any reliability. The possibility of impedance, especially for lightly loaded, long wire runs, does present issues not covered by either practice or code.
Right now, we have to pretty much take breakers on faith. Creating a dead short for testing is like... checking for broken legs by jumping out of an airplane. Not much use if the test itself causes the failure.
