Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

Bruce Weary wrote:
> Our rules and "long term philosophy" in this sport, I think, are 
> predominantly based on our empirical experiences over the last 50 
> years, and influenced by veterinary insight/science. I think that in a 
> small amateur sport such as ours, we are confined, for now, to making 
> many of our policy decisions based largely on empirical experience, 
> with experimental data playing a lesser role, due to it's scarcity and 
> inherent variables. AERC has no professional statistician or clinical 
> researchers on staff, that I know of.
I don't see the lack of "clinical researchers" as the issue - the issue 
is the AERC does not collect the data necessary to make such 
investigations meaningful. Another words we do not collect enough data 
to deal with the variables. For example there are fields in the database 
for the distances between checks. However, there is no data in any of 
those. Therefore no meaningful hypothesis can be test concerning 
distance between checks, completion rate, treatment rate, etc.

We could do much better than we do. The data base is set up to do it. It 
is a matter of collecting the data.
> We already have better than a 99.9% success rate as far as horses 
> surviving rides. It's that last .1% we're working diligently to 
> improve. Let's stay the course. No one is more angry and indignant 
> than I am when a horse dies needlessly at one of our rides. But anger 
> and indignance don't produce effective answers. We're "in business 
> while under construction." And we're making progress.
Mortality rates are low - period. They are lower (or should be) in 
equine athletics. It should not be emotional - however, a cavalier 
attitude is not the answer. Again I suspect we could do a much better 
job with data than we do. If we don't collect data, we don't know what 
questions to ask. If we don't know what questions to ask, we don't know 
what hypothesis to test. If we don't know what hypothesis to test, we 
don't know how to craft a solution. Another words we are not better than 
the folks who align their tables with the earth's magnetic field and 
claim that is the reason a patient walks off better.

If we don't collect all the data we don't know the questions to ask. If 
we don't know the questions to ask - we will make little progress. We 
don't even collect enough data to fill out all the fields in the database.

Truman

--

“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a 
monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also 
into you.” Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil


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