This reminds me of the "study" on NPR at the moment about coffee = decreased chance of Alzheimers.

It couldn't possibly mean that those people who drink more coffee are more into brain stimulating activities or that those who drink more coffee get more jitters and their brain is rapid firing so they do more things to stimulate the brain.

I agree with Bax (not surprising because I love bax lol).

While I think the concept of keeping youngsters moderately fit creates mature horses that don't break down makes sense (this is why many people don't like to stall youngsters and one of the reasons why every youngster mammal on the face of the planet has an inclination toward play), I think this research is a lil bit bogus. But I'm not a researcher so I will just remain skeptical.

Take my sister's soccer team. Three of the girls on her soccer team have had knee surgery in the past year. These are high schoolers. Guess which ones got the knee surgeries? The ones who have been doing the sport seriously since they were 6-8 years old (not the gals who have only been doing it for a few years, mind you). Of course there are others who weren't serious at that age who are just fine now. And then you have my sister, who kicks butt on the soccer field (I'm biased) and has since she was 6-8 years old. Why hasn't she had knee surgery? Is it because she had a better exercise regime than the others? No, but she does have narrower hips and therefore isn't creating excess strain on her knees.

My example is hardly scientific, but I think that should show the fallacy of such anecdotal evidence provided by this "research." There are simply too many factors. They need to have a control (unraced, unworked), a group of 2 year old all under the same training program (two subgroups where one goes to the track and the other continues program until 3), another group of 3 year olds under the same training program, etc. Oh, and they should all be clones/siblings. This is how scientific research is done. Not with diverse groups, different programs, etc.

This is like someone tried to take a social study survey and apply it to biomechanics. That's simply ridiculous.

I'm not saying that the conclusions of the commentators are wrong, but I am saying this type of research is not valid and has no place but for stupid people to say "SEE! I'm right." This is to research as blogging is to ethical news reporting.