It's also rather easy to misread or transpose a number with a lip number (faded in slightly older horse, etc).
Good thing its not easy to botch or fake a name...
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.
The lip tattoo is the easiest way to ID a thoroughbred, actually (and its posted alongside the names on those lists you mentioned). They're not checking their teeth when they flip up their lips in the paddock.
Either way, the lip tattoo isn't a viable option because, once again, it eliminates the anonymity that would encourage participation.
One cannot predict beforehand which datapoints will turn out to be of most significance.
I'm sure a horse's name won't turn out to be a strong predictor of injury (unless we're talking about Crippled McFracture again...)
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.
Who cares? You won't have anything if nobody participates. My point is, even without the specific names, a lot things can be learned from just treating injuries as single events. There's no need to track individuals at this fledgling stage.
As I said, the information collected will never be perfect, no matter how "scientific" you wanna get. The data is being submitted by numerous individuals with different knowledge and skill levels, so the submitter is yet another uncontrolled variable.
|