[Riot]

I must be confused as to the purpose of this national database. So basically, its just one big giant "vet's list"?

Obviously not.

[quote]I still don't see why they need names. QUOTE]

They do need an identifier for each horse. If they used lip tattoos - the vets don't have those numbers for their patients handy - everything is done by registered name. That would have to be new information the vets start collecting just for the study (ain't gonna happen). At the end of the day when the vet fills out the injury forms, they won't get submitted due to being incomplete. It's also rather easy to misread or transpose a number with a lip number (faded in slightly older horse, etc).

Assigning a study accession number wouldn't work very readily, either. First time a horse is submitted, it would be assigned a number, and that number would have to be then known (and used) for the lifetime of the horse by trainers and vets. That won't happen.

The TB industry uses horses' registered name for ID - vet's lists, lasix, entries, etc. It's just more of the same. Compare name to color to age to sex, etc. to make sure you have the right horse. Using the registered name the trainers and vets have ready access to and use all the time.

So submitting information for the study is easy, and doesn't require collecting new or additional information.

I figured the purpose of the database was to track patterns of injuries as they relate to things like age, gender, shoe type, trainer, pedigree, distance, class level, track condition and racing surface, etc., not to target chronically lame, individual horses (which should already hopefully be monitored by the appropriate track vets).

Who said "chronically lame", etc. horses will be "targeted"? Nobody here except you.

Of course all the things you list in detail will be tracked. Have you looked at the reporting form? (look back in Bloodhorse last year, they had a copy attached to the announcement article about the study)

The scary thing is that Dr. Scollay is on record as saying there is no point to comparing data between various racetracks (her example, Mnr vs Sar) because the horse populations are totally different.
Brilliant. So I guess we really don't need a national database if we can't pool all the information. We just need seperate one's for each operating racetrack.

What Dr. Scollay's statement means (and I've read the original) is simply that if it is found, for example, that suspensory strain-mild is the most common injury that occurs at Keeneland, you cannot automatically transfer that "most common injury" type to Turfway, even though both are the same type of surface. She means that injuries found at Saratoga cannot be presumed to be predictive of those that will occur at Belmont or Churchill, although all three are dirt tracks.

The above is one of the big reasons this study is being funded.

Who cares if the same horse shows up twice?

The point of the study is not to make a simple laundry list of injuries. It's important to follow horses through to different tracks, and throughout their careers.

Simple example: fifty horses with a certain type of non-career ending injury at Track A. They disperse at end of meet to Tracks B, C, D. The horses that go to Track B and C, only one-quarter are reinjured, and not career-ending. The horses that went to D are showing up reinjured, and half are career-ending. What's happening at Track D, and how can that be changed? What if Track D is synthetic, and Tracks B and C are dirt?

Its not like the database will ever be totally thorough and complete, and certainly you will never be able to account for every variable that contributes to a racehorse being injured on the track. So a little confounding data in such a large database shouldn't skew the overall results to any significant degree.

LOL - a little confounding data skews - and invalidates - results all the time.

The point of a scientific study is to control the highest number of variables possible, collect the most accurate data possible, not be purposefully sloppy or dismissive on collecting datapoints. One cannot predict beforehand which datapoints will turn out to be of most significance.

Not having identifiers on the horses will eliminate a multitude of ways to examine the data. It will eliminate all "career injury accumulation" information, for example, and all "career ending" injuries as they relate to training, history of previous injury, etc.

I understand the trainers are jumpy about people not in the barn, not the barn's vet, outsiders, having access to privileged information.

However, look at the rationality of that fear - will somebody sneak into Dr. Scollay's office, steal forms or hack into her computer, and find out information about particular horses by name?

Frankly, I see no greater risk of that, than there is now of somebody getting that same information from a barn's veterinarians or the vet assistants.