Did Oskar Pfungst Debunk Clever Hans Mathematical Skills?

In science class or even math class I was told about Clever Hans, the horse that was able to math and tricks. Ever since Clever Hans came into history, more horse owners started to pop up in the news and the internet. On one hand you have Clever Hans being debunked by Oskar Pfungst and on the other you have the question: How did Oskar Pfungst debunk Clever Hans’ mathematical skills. Occam’s razor is pretty much a tool for problem solving, not in a mathematical way, but in terms of logical thinking. Carey states that Occam’s razor was brought about by a philosopher named William of Ockham (2012). Carey also states that William of Ockham’s Occam’s razor explains when a person is trying to figure out a problem, he/she should chose the one that has the fewest
44). Occam’s razor is basically telling man that they should pick the simplest way to explain a problem or phenomenon, since that will most likely be the proper answer. Razor means shaving away unnecessary assumptions (Occam’s Razor, 2015), which definitely gives meaning to the whole concept. Now, Clever Hans was owned by Wilhelm von Osten, who was an amateur horse trainer (Clever Hans, 2014) (this probably gave Pfungst an idea for a hypothesis to prove Osten wrong about Clever Hans.), had Hans perform every day leaving people amazed. Occam’s razor, I believe, was the driving force in Oskar’s Pfungst inquisition for a different reason behind Hans’ math abilities. Pfungst was the one who debunked Hans and his abilities through observation, but also testing different ideas. In fact, Pfungst came up with four hypotheses and then tested them out, but only one claim seemed to pop out, which was the owner had trained Hans to answer the questions (Clever Hans, 2014). It seems as though, Hans was