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Terry Banister wrote:
> The demonstration took the form of a scientific experiment in front of
> witnesses.
Not really.  There were no control subjects.  To be "scientific", the 
experiment should have had 16 horses, 4 that performed bitted twice, 4 
that performed bitless twice, 4 that performed bitted, then bitless, and 
4 that performed bitless, then bitted.  That way you'd have a base line 
for bitted and bitless, an expected improvement due to simply repeating 
the exercises a second time, and the actual improvement (or lack 
thereof) when switching from bit to bitless and bitless to bit.

There is also no way to determine how much of the result is due to the 
Hawthorne Effect, ie, that ANY change will produce a short term 
improvement in productivity.

Often the requirement for a controlled situation may actually work 
against proving the validity of a hypothesis as it applies to the real 
world.  In a controlled situation, such as the arena, an experiment may 
have a great deal of internal validity, ie, it works in the ring, but 
simultaneously lack external validity, as when you take the horse out on 
the trails.  To compensate for this, the experiment should have included 
taking the 16 horses, half in bits and half bitless, 5 miles away from 
the barn, asking them to gallop towards said barn for 30 seconds and 
then asking them to halt USING ONLY THE REINS, no shift of weight or 
vocalization, measuring the time delay between asking for the halt and 
actually getting it.

Caveat:  When I don't ride, I get argumentative  :)

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