ragwort I have had it with the myths

While we are talking about rudeness, Ragwort-facts, are you anything to do with the blog entry containing this description of HHO members?

Unfortunately, this intelligent woman is casting pearls before swine on that forum. There are some there who are "True Believers" in the hysteria and who dismiss her out of hand. I know the regular scientific readers of this blog will be holding their heads in horror as a time after time one ignoramus after another repeats the endless ragwort myths and uses poor cognitive skills to do so. Ignoramus is the word all right. It comes from a the name of a character in a play and means "we don't know" in Latin.
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From http://ragwort-hysteria.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/mob-mentality-of-true-believers.html
 
Alec Swan said:
RagwortFacts, I don't suppose that with Esther, you have any collective experience of cats, do you? If you do, there's another stupid thread which would benefit from your input. Go on, give it a go, you'll fit in a treat! ;)

Alec. :D
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You`re SO bad:) surprised you lot are still at though.
 
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RagwortFacts said:
........

Let's be clear about this one. .......

"Through our research about the sources of the reports on the danger of touching ragwort, we conclude that there is no substantial evidence that there is a health risk for people. .......

.......
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So let's be clear about this, "No substantial evidence" is proof that the weed doesn't pose a threat to humans? Really? Is this being offered as a reasoned form of argument in a debate?

Your potted theories do little to recommend you, or your countrymen and their equally half baked arguments.

Now then, Cats and kittens, and the UK breeding policies. If that's gone over your head, check in Soapbox, I feel sure that your input would be of very real value. ;)

Alec.
 
cptrayes said:
While we are talking about rudeness, Ragwort-facts, are you anything to do with the blog entry containing this description of HHO members?




From http://ragwort-hysteria.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/mob-mentality-of-true-believers.html
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Noooooo! Let them carry on believing that we're a bunch of ignorant hicks who wave pitchforks and torches at things we don't understand and need to be educated about the legitimacy or otherwise of Ragwort Myths and Legends, then maybe, just maybe, they'll give up and go away...
 
rhino said:
I believe so, previous blog posts have mentioned HHO by name... They really don't engender any confidence in them as scientific professionals, do they? :D
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Writing as a non-scientist with a pretty good understanding of scientfic method, Rhino, I suspect you are as amused as I am by the incredibly bad science written on both the blog and in many of the Ragwort-trio's posts on this thread.

Ragwort poisons through the stomach and therefore can't poison through the skin? About as sensible as saying tobacco causes cancer by being burnt and inhaled and therefore can't cause cancer by being chewed. Go tell that to the people with mouth cancer in the US where chewing tobacco is common :o

The blog states that
the international consensus is that ragwort poisoning is quite rare.
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when of course no-one knows how rare it is because they don't know how many horses that die of liver failure have it due to ragwort ingestion. Liver failure is not rare at all and for all we know every single case could have been caused by ragwort ingestion, because it wasn't caused by chronic alcoholism, was it :confused: ? Their statement has no scientific validity whatsoever.


But we aren't going to be able to persuade them, are we? the best we can hope for is that some time they will get bored and go and play somewhere else.
 
Esther and co:

Carry on growing your dense sward for your horses and pull out what ragwort remains with your bare hands.

You are entitled to believe what you want to, and to pursue what research avenue you want to.

It is the manner in which you attempt to get your point of view across which I object most strongly too. And this has nothing to do with the language barrier.
 
Finally some things I can agree with Esther on, from yet another forum where she has been attempting to 'educate' the public.

Everything that is published on the web should be regarded with skepticism, because everybody can create a website these days and everybody claims to be an expert.
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:D I remember saying something similar on this thread :D

Ragwort is smarter then we are.
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Than you perhaps, most UK horse owners seem to manage it just fine :cool:
 
rhino said:
.
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Your logic and science appear absolutely abysmally bad to me. You do not seem to be applying any knowledge of the scientific method that I think any proper educational institution would teach. This seems to be to be an utterly dreadful example of ignorance of the fundamental basics of science. Frankly, you don't seem to have the slightest clue of how scientific arguments work.
Or are you trolling for responses?

You say

'No substantial evidence', 'might' and 'no proof' are not conclusive. Sorry. We've repeatedly asked for proof, it is not forthcoming.

Yet you cannot prove that this number is false.
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It seems to me that you consistently repeat a well known fallacy. This is not something that I would expect from anyone with a good scientific education.
You seem to consistently support ideas which have no evidence and then say that it is OK to do it. You seem to be implying that anyone can make any silly claim and it must then be true because nobody can show that it isn't. This is patently absurd.


The burden of proof lies with someone who is making a claim, and is not upon anyone else to disprove. The inability, or disinclination, to disprove a claim does not render that claim valid, nor give it any credence whatsoever. This is a fundamental part of the philosophy of logic and a critical element of the scientific method.
You do not seem to have the slightest clue about what you are talking about with regards to logic, proofs or the scientific method.

I have already explained that Prof Knottenbelt arranges treatment for many hundreds of horses a year, that are never referred to Leahurst. Yet again more attempts to discredit someone, with no evidence of malpractice
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I said nothing about Professor Knottenbelt. I have don't know precisely where he fits in to the statistics I quoted. I am sure he has quite a lot of expertese as a vet.Unlike some people here, I do actually understand about proof and evidence so I don't
mention things when I don't have evidence. Unfortunately this seems to be yet another case of your jumping to unwarranted conclusions.

Highly intelligent? Possibly, but she seems to be completely unable to answer simple questions put to her. As a result of this, I feel completely justified in not believing anything she says, as the oft requested 'evidence' is not forthcoming.
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It seems to me that no intelligent person would try to reply to your requests.
The burden of proof actually lies with YOU. It would seem that this would be known to anyone with a proper knowledge of the scientific method and that you are actually asking nonsensical questions. Intelligent people don't tend to listen to people who awsk nonsensical questions.
 
RagwortFacts said:
Your logic and science appear absolutely abysmally bad to me. You do not seem to be applying any knowledge of the scientific method that I think any proper educational institution would teach. This seems to be to be an utterly dreadful example of ignorance of the fundamental basics of science. Frankly, you don't seem to have the slightest clue of how scientific arguments work.
Or are you trolling for responses?

*snorts* You're funny. And your qualifications were.... Any peer reviewed studies you could link for me to read?

You say

It seems to me that you consistently repeat a well known fallacy. What fallacy? Show me one thing I have said on this thread that has been disproven.This is not something that I would expect from anyone with a good scientific education.
You seem to consistently support ideas which have no evidence and then say that it is OK to do it. You seem to be implying that anyone can make any silly claim and it must then be true because nobody can show that it isn't. This is patently absurd.

No, I support no ideas without proof, but in the case of something which could potentially cause risk, and there is no proof to the contrary, then better safe than sorry.


The burden of proof lies with someone who is making a claim, and is not upon anyone else to disprove. The inability, or disinclination, to disprove a claim does not render that claim valid, nor give it any credence whatsoever. This is a fundamental part of the philosophy of logic and a critical element of the scientific method.
You do not seem to have the slightest clue about what you are talking about with regards to logic, proofs or the scientific method.

Oh I have plenty of 'clue', and the only claims I have seen have come from you and your friends. I see nothing but estimates, clearly marketed as such, which you are unable to either prove or disprove.

I said nothing about Professor Knottenbelt. Well Prof. Knottenbelt is the main researcher on ragwort at Leahurst so it's not too much of a jump from quoting FOI requests at Leahurst due to ragwort poisoning...I have don't know precisely where he fits in to the statistics I quoted. I am sure he has quite a lot of expertese as a vet.Unlike some people here, I do actually understand about proof and evidence so I don't mention things when I don't have evidence. Fantastic. Where is your evidence then? Unfortunately this seems to be yet another case of your jumping to unwarranted conclusions.

What conclusion have I made? That we don't have enough information to know either way?

It seems to me that no intelligent person would try to reply to your requests.
The burden of proof actually lies with YOU. It would seem that this would be known to anyone with a proper knowledge of the scientific method and that you are actually asking nonsensical questions. Intelligent people don't tend to listen to people who awsk nonsensical questions.
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Not nonsensical questions at all, and questions I'd expect any intelligent person with any degree of scientific background to be able to answer.

So, RagwortFacts, what facts have been brought to the table on this thread? None as far as most of us can see. The burden of proof most certainly does not lie with me, if you choose to come on to a public forum you have to accept you will be questioned, there is nothing to be gained from glibly accepting everything said on here . Conjecture, hearsay, that's all I've been reading. I've yet to see a single piece of evidence to support the claims being made...
 
cptrayes said:
But the myths that you are so hysterical about do no harm whatsoever Esther.
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Cptrayes. Is that [content removed]? If so you seem to be rather an excellent horsewoman.
Unfortunately your grasp of logic or consequences doesn't seem so good.

I can think of plenty of harm that can be done by these myths.

Horses may be harmed by vets thinking that ragwort poisoning is commoner than it is.
We know from the literature published around the world that liver damage is frequently not caused by ragwort even when it may originally be thought it was. Horses may therefore be misdiagnosed and not treated properly.

Horses may be harmed because more effort is put into the ragwort problem than to more serious issues.

People may be harmed by wasting their money on unnecessary controls.

People may be harmed because their businesses suffer reputational harm because they have published something incorrect that they picked up on a forum or in a magazine.

People may be harmed because they write to newspapers and are then ridiculed by people who really know what they are talking about replying.

People may have their adverts banned by the Advertising Standards Authority who adhere to proper scientific protocols and demand that claims made are supported by evidence. Not by "Horse and Hound forum logic" which seems to say you can make any daft claim you like as long as nobody can produce the obviously non-existent evidence needed to disprove it.

They may be prosecuted, as making false unsubstantiable claims can be against consumer protection legislation.

Someone may suffer psychological harm, because they heard about the skin-absorption myth like the terrified young teenage girl who contacted a ragwort expert because she had handled ragwort and thought she was going to die.

Someone may suffer loss in their work or professional standing because they come to a forum like this and, like many do on this forum, talk utter rubbish. They could get sacked from jobs or never get interviews or suffer loss of pay rises.

Their bosses or peers may have proper training in science and logic and recognise the irrational twaddle for what it really is. There really are some people in this forum who show personality traits through their arguement style which can be associated with identifiable traits known from the scientific literature to be associated with poor cognitive performance.
They may read this forum and decide they don't want to employ some of the "thickos"
 
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Dear RW,
Point 1 you are absolutely correct, just because ester, nick and yourself say your view is the truth... Doesn't make it so.

Point 2: if you can tell me that removing ragwort from a field is actually more dangerous for horses than leaving it in the field, I'd happily hear your argument, but as far as I can see removing it only harms the caterpillars, and since I don't give a flying toss about caterpillars... If it ever appears in my field I will remove it.

Point 3: your written English is excellent, far easier to see the points that you are trying to make... But I still don't get them... Perhaps you could try typing them in bold or italics, maybe a picture or two... I'm sure that will have me hugging ragwort and talking to it in no time.

Point 4: I'm not sure if anyone has ever told you not to tick off a rhino before... Well they generally trample the hell out of you. And they are actually very intelligent.

Finally back to my original point (point 1) you tell us that just because we are told by an expert that RW is bad, we shouldn't just accept this as fact. Why then do you expect us to accept the belief that it isn't poisonous as fact? You going to make your horse eat some every day and test it's liver function at intervals to prove your claim or do even you have doubts about its safety?! Or perhaps you could use a lovely essence of ragwort body cream every day for a year and tell us the results?

I honestly don't get why the hell Any of you care what we do over here as long as we are not endangering our horses it's none of your damn business!!!!!
 
RagwortFacts said:
Cptrayes. Is that [content removed]? If so you seem to be rather an excellent horsewoman.
Unfortunately your grasp of logic or consequences doesn't seem so good.

I can think of plenty of harm that can be done by these myths.

Horses may be harmed by vets thinking that ragwort poisoning is commoner than it is.
We know from the literature published around the world that liver damage is frequently not caused by ragwort even when it may originally be thought it was. Horses may therefore be misdiagnosed and not treated properly.

Horses may be harmed because more effort is put into the ragwort problem than to more serious issues.

People may be harmed by wasting their money on unnecessary controls.

People may be harmed because their businesses suffer reputational harm because they have published something incorrect that they picked up on a forum or in a magazine.

People may be harmed because they write to newspapers and are then ridiculed by people who really know what they are talking about replying.

People may have their adverts banned by the Advertising Standards Authority who adhere to proper scientific protocols and demand that claims made are supported by evidence. Not by "Horse and Hound forum logic" which seems to say you can make any daft claim you like as long as nobody can produce the obviously non-existent evidence needed to disprove it.

They may be prosecuted, as making false unsubstantiable claims can be against consumer protection legislation.

Someone may suffer psychological harm, because they heard about the skin-absorption myth like the terrified young teenage girl who contacted a ragwort expert because she had handled ragwort and thought she was going to die.

Someone may suffer loss in their work or professional standing because they come to a forum like this and, like many do on this forum, talk utter rubbish. They could get sacked from jobs or never get interviews or suffer loss of pay rises.

Their bosses or peers may have proper training in science and logic and recognise the irrational twaddle for what it really is. There really are some people in this forum who show personality traits through their arguement style which can be associated with identifiable traits known from the scientific literature to be associated with poor cognitive performance.
They may read this forum and decide they don't want to employ some of the "thickos"
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What a lovely person you sound. How about taking your face for a .....
 
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RagwortFacts said:
Cptrayes. Is that [content removed]? If so you seem to be rather an excellent horsewoman.
Unfortunately your grasp of logic or consequences doesn't seem so good.

I can think of plenty of harm that can be done by these myths.

Horses may be harmed by vets thinking that ragwort poisoning is commoner than it is.
We know from the literature published around the world that liver damage is frequently not caused by ragwort even when it may originally be thought it was. Horses may therefore be misdiagnosed and not treated properly.


Horses may be harmed because more effort is put into the ragwort problem than to more serious issues.

People may be harmed by wasting their money on unnecessary controls.

People may be harmed because their businesses suffer reputational harm because they have published something incorrect that they picked up on a forum or in a magazine.

People may be harmed because they write to newspapers and are then ridiculed by people who really know what they are talking about replying.

People may have their adverts banned by the Advertising Standards Authority who adhere to proper scientific protocols and demand that claims made are supported by evidence. Not by "Horse and Hound forum logic" which seems to say you can make any daft claim you like as long as nobody can produce the obviously non-existent evidence needed to disprove it.

They may be prosecuted, as making false unsubstantiable claims can be against consumer protection legislation.

Someone may suffer psychological harm, because they heard about the skin-absorption myth like the terrified young teenage girl who contacted a ragwort expert because she had handled ragwort and thought she was going to die.

Someone may suffer loss in their work or professional standing because they come to a forum like this and, like many do on this forum, talk utter rubbish. They could get sacked from jobs or never get interviews or suffer loss of pay rises.

Their bosses or peers may have proper training in science and logic and recognise the irrational twaddle for what it really is. There really are some people in this forum who show personality traits through their arguement style which can be associated with identifiable traits known from the scientific literature to be associated with poor cognitive performance.
They may read this forum and decide they don't want to employ some of the "thickos"
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Wow, you are getting a little worrying.....the final couple of paragraphs are quite telling of YOUR personality traits I would say, not pleasant and quite vitriolic.

Given everything that has gone before, and how much we have been bashed over the head to get the (well hidden) message about the 'myths', I think the main thing to say here is that when finally someone explains what their main worries are in terms of consequences over people believing these 'myths', it's noteable that the consequences aren't very far reaching, and that your definition of 'harmed' is tenous to say the least - I am not going to be 'harmed' financially by buying a ragwort fork, or having my field sprayed for weeds. Some of the points might make people peeved rather than harmed, or businesses might have to pull an advert - big deal. You honestly think that someone is going to be refused an interview because they posted a comment on here saying that they are going to continue to pull ragwort out of their field until they see irrefutable evidence that it is safe? Nor is a potential employer going to trawl through these posts to read an argument on logic and scientific method between a couple of anonymous posters, just because they might be their future employee. Get real. They'll go to Facebook to dig their dirt ;). Plus, you are particularly scathing about these people - what do you care? Surely if they are weeded out of their workplace, that would make you happy?

You guys seem to be self-perpertuating your second point on harming horses because of the effort put into ragwort. I agree - you should be off doing something better with your time (I know I should be). You seem to be awfully het up about this on behalf of such a small problem.

The main problem is you are trying to preach to the wrong audience - and then are getting upset when people don't see the point of your argument. It's simple, most of these 'problems' that you point out simply don't apply to the gen pop at HHO. They apply to vets, who hopefully read the scientific literature, and to businesses, who should know better than to print unsubstantiated facts and make sure they get access to current opinions.

If you want to educate, you put forward a clear and concise thesis on what the problem is - crucially, the problem has to be applicable to those you are trying to reach. You don't tell people they believe in myths and are steeped in hysteria if you want to reach them. I would say that the amount of (sometimes) confused replies that have been posted in response to this topic is due mainly to the inability of the original poster, Esther, to be able to express her 'worries' clearly and concisely - and I don't mean that she is unable to do so because English is her second language, just that she was incapable. She couldn't get the point across that you guys think that ragwort is less of a problem than might be generally believed and consequentially, a small population of businesses and individuals might be brought to task, or suffer an inconvenience for not being up to date with current knowledge (always assuming the research you are basing your arguments on is good ;) peer review can be flawed....). The question over veterinary diagnosis is moot; I agree that if the cause of a condition is not correctly identified early on in the disease, then avoidable mistakes might be made and the consequences may be poor. However, if an animal already has severe liver disease and the damage is irreversible, then the cause becomes irrelevant. In addition, most vets will invoke Occam's Razor: if a horse is stood in a field with poor pasture and lots of ragwort and the owner reports this has been the case for many years, then you go figure what the likely cause of its liver disease is.....

As we have repeated, many times, for most normal, busy people, looking after their horses day to day, to tell them that yes, ragwort can be poisonous, but you don't need to worry about it because it is only poisonous if your horse eats lots of it, the message just doesn't scan. People don't have the time or the inclination for it to scan. It's like telling a mother that 'yes, bleach is dangerous to little Billy, but only if he drinks the whole bottle, so you'll be fine so long as you make sure he doesn't drink it all'. How about you put it on the top shelf and remove the risk? That's what people will continue to do, with little impact on the ragwort population in the UK for Esther and Co to get worried about, until someone comes along and says, hey, we have irrefutable evidence that ragwort is not toxic to your Neds, and that's obviously not going to happen.
 
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Ragwort facts

Every morning this week I have spent 10-15 minutes digging ragwort out of my winter field. In the 4 summers I have been using that field no ragwort has been allowed to flower, let alone seed, in or adjacent to it. My summer field only gets the occasional plant which is dug up as soon as I see it. I am now on top of that field & will just monitor on a weekly basis. I suspect my experience is pretty average although, sadly, I don't have any peer reviewed papers to back that up.

Esther & co keep coming on here telling us we are hysterical & manage our pasture all wrong, but do not, despite us asking for clear recommendations, make any sensible suggestions.
Bearing in mind that all of the horses on my yard are good doers currently needing to be strip grazed with the majority being cobs/native x, what do you suggest? What can you recommend that will save me time/money & improve my horses welfare. I bought my ragfork 5 or 6 years ago, other than that I spend £0 p.a.

Are you saying I should just leave the ragwort there? The suggestion from one of our Dutch friends appeared to be that unless you could guarantee that your pasture was always ragwort free you shouldn't have a horse. I did twice ask if that was really what he meant because it would be easy for him to say something misleading in English, but the question was ignored.

By the way, I'm an extremely intelligent person too, so if the point isn't getting across to me it's not being well put & you don't stand a chance of making it to the majority of the population.
 
RagwortFacts said:
Cptrayes. Is that [content removed]? If so you seem to be rather an excellent horsewoman.
Unfortunately your grasp of logic or consequences doesn't seem so good.

I can think of plenty of harm that can be done by these myths.

Horses may be harmed by vets thinking that ragwort poisoning is commoner than it is.
We know from the literature published around the world that liver damage is frequently not caused by ragwort even when it may originally be thought it was. Horses may therefore be misdiagnosed and not treated properly.

Horses may be harmed because more effort is put into the ragwort problem than to more serious issues.

People may be harmed by wasting their money on unnecessary controls.

People may be harmed because their businesses suffer reputational harm because they have published something incorrect that they picked up on a forum or in a magazine.

People may be harmed because they write to newspapers and are then ridiculed by people who really know what they are talking about replying.

People may have their adverts banned by the Advertising Standards Authority who adhere to proper scientific protocols and demand that claims made are supported by evidence. Not by "Horse and Hound forum logic" which seems to say you can make any daft claim you like as long as nobody can produce the obviously non-existent evidence needed to disprove it.

They may be prosecuted, as making false unsubstantiable claims can be against consumer protection legislation.

Someone may suffer psychological harm, because they heard about the skin-absorption myth like the terrified young teenage girl who contacted a ragwort expert because she had handled ragwort and thought she was going to die.

Someone may suffer loss in their work or professional standing because they come to a forum like this and, like many do on this forum, talk utter rubbish. They could get sacked from jobs or never get interviews or suffer loss of pay rises.

Their bosses or peers may have proper training in science and logic and recognise the irrational twaddle for what it really is. There really are some people in this forum who show personality traits through their arguement style which can be associated with identifiable traits known from the scientific literature to be associated with poor cognitive performance.
They may read this forum and decide they don't want to employ some of the "thickos"
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Ragwort Facts - are you a part of the "research" team too?

If you are then you may need to look for better reasons to justify your (bizarre) research than the ones you list above.

The only, as you put it, "daft claims" and "utter rubbish" on this thread, are the ones made by you and your colleagues.

For example: People may suffer "psychological harm", "be prosecuted", "could get sacked from their jobs" etc etc. as fall-out from the ragwort "myths". Seriously??!!!!!

If it weren't for the fact that you had a website dedicated to your cause, I would have assumed that this thread was one big wind-up.
 
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RagwortFacts said:
Cptrayes. Is that Caroline Trayes? If so you seem to be rather an excellent horsewoman.
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I wouldn't call myself an excellent horsewoman but thankyou for the compliment. On English forums, you might like to note, it is rude to use a person's given name unless they do so themselves. Please don't do it again.


Unfortunately your grasp of logic or consequences doesn't seem so good.
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Ah, now I would have to disagree with you there. I have been tested with a very reliable test as being in the top 1% of the world's population for my critical reasoning ability. Have you done the Watson Glazer test? Where did you come, can I ask?

I can think of plenty of harm that can be done by these myths.
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You have a vivid imagination, I'll give you that :D

Their bosses or peers may have proper training in science and logic and recognise the irrational twaddle for what it really is. There really are some people in this forum who show personality traits through their arguement style which can be associated with identifiable traits known from the scientific literature to be associated with poor cognitive performance.
They may read this forum and decide they don't want to employ some of the "thickos"
Click to expand...

Just because one or two people post on a forum showing that they have not been lucky enough to have the level of education, or be born with the cognitive skills, that others have, is no reason to describe the entire body of forum users as thick.

Plenty of us have made perfectly valid challenges to what the trio of you have been writing, and those challenges have been sidestepped or ignored. It is not our cognitive performance that you should be worrying about.

If you are seriously worried about bosses spotting people's lack of critical thinking, cognitive skills and social media skills, I think you need to look closer to home.
 
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RagwortFacts said:
Horses may be harmed by vets thinking that ragwort poisoning is commoner than it is.
We know from the literature published around the world that liver damage is frequently not caused by ragwort even when it may originally be thought it was. Horses may therefore be misdiagnosed and not treated properly.
Click to expand...

Can you please tell me exactly what the difference in treatment is between liver failure from ragwort poisoning and liver failure for any other reason?

If there is a good answer to this question, as there may be, then I would also ask why the devil THAT is not the information that you are trying to spread, instead of the nonsense that has been written about so far. If this thread had been set up to explain to people with horses with liver failure that they should be receiving a totally different treatment than they are, then I could understand your fervour.

Can you also please tell me how anyone can reliably ever say that liver failure was not caused by ragwort unless they bred the horse in a ragwort free box, fed it no forage, and kept it there until the symptoms appeared?
 
cptrayes said:
.......

On English forums, you might like to note, it is rude to use a person's given name unless they do so themselves. Please don't do it again.

.......
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It's also in clear contravention of the T&Cs of this forum, which may explain why RF's name seems to be now in dark print. ;)

Alec.
 
Sigh.

I'll never learn how I could improve my horses welfare as well as saving so much time and money.

It did occur to me that if they want to debunk a myth that really does cause needless panic maybe they should address the issue of plaits in manes & theft. That one could run & run!
 
Goldenstar said:
Does that mean we are saved from reading any more about their very wierd fetish that willbe a relief.
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Doubt it. Im sure they will be back to patronise, insult, and post links at us until we all agree that *whatever it is they are trying to get us to do* :confused: is the right and only way to do *whatever it is they are trying to get us to do*
 
Oh but it's been such fun :D

The only arguments I like better than this one is where the other people arguing back actually know what they are talking about. Unfortunately this lot don't know much about grazing horses in this country, or scientific method.



ps it weren't me that button pushed. I post under my own name, I just don't like people I've never met or anyone anonymous using my given name on this forum.
 
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RagwortFacts said:
Cptrayes. Is that [content removed]? If so you seem to be rather an excellent horsewoman.
Unfortunately your grasp of logic or consequences doesn't seem so good.

I can think of plenty of harm that can be done by these myths.

Horses may be harmed by vets thinking that ragwort poisoning is commoner than it is.

We know from the literature published around the world that liver damage is frequently not caused by ragwort even when it may originally be thought it was. Horses may therefore be misdiagnosed and not treated properly.

Horses may be harmed because more effort is put into the ragwort problem than to more serious issues.

People may be harmed by wasting their money on unnecessary controls.

People may be harmed because their businesses suffer reputational harm because they have published something incorrect that they picked up on a forum or in a magazine.

People may be harmed because they write to newspapers and are then ridiculed by people who really know what they are talking about replying.

People may have their adverts banned by the Advertising Standards Authority who adhere to proper scientific protocols and demand that claims made are supported by evidence. Not by "Horse and Hound forum logic" which seems to say you can make any daft claim you like as long as nobody can produce the obviously non-existent evidence needed to disprove it.

They may be prosecuted, as making false unsubstantiable claims can be against consumer protection legislation.

Someone may suffer psychological harm, because they heard about the skin-absorption myth like the terrified young teenage girl who contacted a ragwort expert because she had handled ragwort and thought she was going to die.

Someone may suffer loss in their work or professional standing because they come to a forum like this and, like many do on this forum, talk utter rubbish. They could get sacked from jobs or never get interviews or suffer loss of pay rises.

Their bosses or peers may have proper training in science and logic and recognise the irrational twaddle for what it really is. There really are some people in this forum who show personality traits through their arguement style which can be associated with identifiable traits known from the scientific literature to be associated with poor cognitive performance.
They may read this forum and decide they don't want to employ some of the "thickos"
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Really? I mean, most of this . . . just . . . really?

Sigh. Get a grip/life, please.

P
 
hairycob said:
Bearing in mind that all of the horses on my yard are good doers currently needing to be strip grazed with the majority being cobs/native x, what do you suggest? What can you recommend that will save me time/money & improve my horses welfare. I bought my ragfork 5 or 6 years ago, other than that I spend £0 p.a.
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A simple method had been found to destroy the Ragwort. Sea water, from which life on Earth had sprung, became the means of preserving life on Earth. Mankind survived and once again have reason to give thanks.​
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Ah, no sorry now, that was how to kill Triffids, not ragwort. Oh well ;) :cool:
 
The Cinnabar Moth which may or may not be under threat has one 'brood' per year.
Surprise surprise, the adult moths emerge in June (cue Esther et al)

If anyone is in any doubt, the Cinnabar Moth absorbs toxic alkaloids from ragwort to protect itself from predators.

Ragwort is poisonous. We know it, Esther knows it, even the bloody moth knows it.

Those are ragwort facts:rolleyes:

ETA The moth lives almost exclusively on ragwort
 
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It's a good job seawater is for killing triffids not ragwort - Bedfordshire is about as far from the sea as you can get in the UK. Handy in Holland though, they would just have to let the sea back in.
 
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