Stupid Study
"Huh?" I came across an article about a stupid study, and i just had to comment. I couldn’t find the original study, so I wasn’t able to verify any of what’s written in this article. But from what I can tell, it seems like a pretty crap study. It sounds a lot like they set out with a conclusion in mind, designed a study that would prove it, and then congratulated themselves on being right all along. The theory was that nervous people make horses calmer. Take a minute to let that soak in. Here’s the link. Now, I can understand a schoolmaster—or even an unbroken horse—feeling less threatened by someone green and vulnerable placed at the center of a situation like this versus, say, a more confident handler venturing in there with the intention of “being the alpha,” who is naturally going to provoke a more wary, nervous response in the horse. If the study was just making the distinction between horses' responses to people who seem to know what they