Ragwort Hysteria 6,500 Deaths Bad Science
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The following piece is an extract from the website of the Invertebrate Conservation Trust "1. The British Horse Society (BHS) claim that 6500 horses are dying every year from Ragwort poisoning. 2. However, Ragwort poisoning can only be confirmed by dissection of the liver. 3. The BHS data is not based on confirmed data but the suspicions of vets. In addition, the statistical analysis is inexcusable. 4. The survey asked British Equestrian Veterinary Association (BEVA) members how many suspected cases of Ragwort fatalities they had seen in 2002. 4% of BEVA members responded saying on average they had seen 3.37 cases. The 3.37 was then multiplied by the membership of BEVA (1,945) to give an annual total of 6,553 cases. 5. As anyone with a science degree will tell you, this is an absurd approach. In the first place, vets who did not encounter any Ragwort poisoning would be unlikely to respond to a survey about Ragwort poisoning as they would not consider it to be an issue. For all we know 96% of BEVA members may believe that Ragwort poisoning is an exceptionally rare factor in horse deaths."
Note "The statistical analysis is inexcusable". In other words they are talking nonsense. Yet this story received wide coverage in the British press. The reality is that even a vet cannot be absolutely sure what caused the liver failure in the animal in many cases. The toxins in ragwort cause the death of liver cells amny other things do to and there are other plants which contain the same kinds of toxins. This story has contributed to the wide level of hysteria about this plant. A hysteria that is not justified in the face of the scientific facts.
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