Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

My project is on telling a horse's personality by the shape of their head. The way I am going to do it is take pictues of 7 horses, which I've already done, then by using a book my grandpa has I will determine their personality then I will ask if they were that way before they were trained, because you can teach a horse to not have a certain characteristic, and if it would be better have my dad ride the horse. I just wondered if you thought it was a good project and if not how to do it better or an idea that relates to it or just an idea! Thank you!

Hi,

A good project is an idea that really fascinates you, and other people’s opinion of it should not matter - at least that is my opinion. I suspect as you look into it you will find that people do not now think there is much truth to the idea of phrenology, though for a while in the past people thought it might be true. If you look at the two links below, you will see some reasons why it is important to design your experiment very carefully to try to avoid biasing your results. This means, for example, when you ask your references to describe the horses personality you should not tell them what your phrenology conclusions were before they answer about the horse’s personality, and hopefully your references have not read your book on phrenology before they answer. Also you should make a written answer about each horse’s personality before you hear your reference’s personality description, so their description does not influence your phrenology assessment of the horse.

http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=384

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology

Personally I have not heard of this project being done before, and I think it could be very interesting, though you will face some people who think it is pseudoscience or worse.

I hope you have a lot of fun with whatever project you choose!!

Best regards,

Barrett Tomlinson

Hi,
I am also doing this project and I would like to know what materials I would need. I have 6 horses and need to know if I need anything else.
Thanks!
spottedearhead2319