Sarah Jenkins, H&H reporter at WEG

28 September, 2010

Dutch number two Adelinde Cornelissen is out of WEG after blood was seen in the horse's mouth in the grand prix

Adelinde Cornelissen and Jerich Parzival, gold medal prospects at the World Games, have been eliminated after blood was seen in the horse's mouth. 

Judge at c and head of the ground jury Britain's Stephen Clarke had to ask Adelinde to leave the arena after her halt and rein back on seeing the red in the foam around the horse's mouth. 

Speaking to Stephen Clarke at the national championships last month he said that he was honoured to have the responsibility of judging from C, but was dreading something like this happening and having to send a rider out. 

Adelinde shrugged her shoulders and patted her horse, dropped her reins and walked out. 

Up until that point she was well in the lead, scoring nines for their halt, ...

 recently ran across this paper in the Journal of Research In Personality which had some interesting things to say about how people come to have beliefs in superstitions or paranormal phenomenon. This is relevant to the issue of alternative medicine both directly, since so many alternative approaches rely on vitalism or notions of magical forces (acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractic, reiki, etc) and also since the mental mechanisms underlying false beliefs in general likely apply to many different categories of belief.

I have said many times that I do not think false beliefs in medicine, even in the wackiest and most ridiculous ideas, have any consistent relationship to how smart people are, and only a tenuous relationship to an individual’s level of education. There aremistakes we all make in thinking that lead us to erroneous conclusions, and there is a whole literature in the field of psychology which examines these. It is clear that ...