Largest Argument against the Concussion/CTE Hysteria

There are people coming out and urging people to use common sense. Please read article link. I have read others as well. Right now, we just have to ride this out and do our best to educate parents. Regardless of parent education, we are going to have parents who are concerned and there is nothing wrong with that concern. The concern with concussions is what is leading to new rules, better equipment, etc. As a coach and parent of high school football player, I want my son to enjoy and learn from this great game but I also want him to minimize the risk of any long-term negative effects.

Parents, Stop Obsessing Over Concussions

Oh, is that how research is performed? I guess that you should contact the authors of this paper (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4098841/) to let them know that their findings are faulty, b/c they looked at a cohort of players, who didn't all commit suicide or die young.

As to your second point, I strongly suggest that you read up on CTE and how, and especially when, its symptoms reveal themselves.

As far as education goes, you shouldn't be educating anyone on this topic. Instead, you should educate yourself on A) How scientific research is performed in order to derive empirical results and B) The research that currently exists in this arena.

Wheels,

A couple of things:

1. Right now the only way to 100% diagnose CTE is by extracting brain tissue so the subjects have to be dead. So yes it makes sense that the high school players they have studied died early. BUT as research continues, the researchers want as many samples as they can get their hands on. In fact, we could all pledge to donate right now

www.bu.edu/cte/our-research/brain-donation-registry/

But I don't think the researchers would call this selection bias, they are just working with what they have, and they want to diversify that pool of subjects. And along the same lines, the researchers are not spreading hysteria --in fact---they seem to  be quite objective. It's the media that is spreading the hysteria.

2. Your claim that there is selection bias is somewhat softened by your completely unscientific observation that states -   "however there is not an epidemic of CTE from playing high school football. If there was, we would all see it daily in our friends, family, and ex players"


While I get what you're trying to say, this is not a strong argument to bring to the public. Big tobacco could and did make similar arguments. And it is true that there are plenty of middle aged people who have smoked mot of their lives that seem fine. That doesn't mean that smoking doesn't cause emphysema/cancer/COPD etc later in life.

3. I feel your frustration with these one side stories, but I think are best bet at combating them, and the most ethical way, is to follow the research in an objective manner and see what becomes of it.


Read more: coachhuey.com/post/new/71891#ixzz3wHw5Xcgk

Most of the players that they have tested their brains were hard drinking, hard fighting, roughnecks and brain injuries could have been caused by one too many bumps or black eyes.



"There are a number of cases in people who never saw an athletic field," he said. Cantu gave the examples of former military members, people who have suffered from gram mal seizures, autistic children who rocked and banged their heads, abuse victims, and even people who were shot out of a cannon as part of a circus act.



CTE can be diagnosed only after death.


www.cnn.com/2015/09/18/health/nfl-brain-study-cte/

There was entire book, a meta-analysis of peer-reviewed research really, that looked at high school athletes and their exposure to traumatic brain injury. This was not a selection of players, who had committed suicide or died young, as you claim. If you'd like to read it, you can find it at this link: iom.nationalacademies.org/Reports/2013/Sports-Related-Concussions-in-Youth-Improving-the-Science-Changing-the-Culture.aspx

You say that you understand how scientific studies are conducted, yet you've repeatedly claimed selection bias. Any sound, scientific study will control for selection threat by simply randomizing the cohort. In this way, subjects are balanced across experimental conditions in a way that makes them no different from subjects in any other experimental condition, and this is done in a systematic way in order to avoid quasi-experimental results. In other words, if this weren't done, you'd have no baseline to make comparative judgments. Looking at a football player's brain, who was known to exhibit deviant behavior prior to death, is not selection bias. Scientific documents based upon individual accounts, such as those written by Bennet Omalu, only serve to call for further research.


This provides two key elements to any study that might be conducted based upon these findings. First, as previously stated, it gives an indication as to whether further research is warranted in this area, and second, it allows for physical findings to be looked at more closely, instead of what are essentially educated guesses being made about the damage to cortical matter. These are simply medical reports. They're not designed to compare findings to any other group, unless a sufficient cohort of former football players' brains were examined after death, then compared to the general population. To my knowledge, this type of study has not been published.

The definition of selection bias is a lack of randomizing a sample so it doesn't truly represent the population trying to be studied.  Examining the brains of NFL players who exhibited "deviant" behavior before their deaths so their families donate their brains and not a random sample of brains of NFL players is selection bias if the study is trying to show proportionally what percent of players develop CTE.  I understand that most studies are not aimed at this, but that is not the media's or general public's interpretation of them.  I'll admit that I should change my statement to they show selection bias "if" trying to show what proportion of NFL players may develop CTE with the methods discussed.  They have only shown that CTE exists.   However, the media's/public's interpretations of these studies seems to be jumping to a whole lot of conclusions that have yet to be made.  Do you agree with that?  I'm not saying its an issue that should be ignored or pushed under the rug.  As football coaches we need to embrace these studies because they will help preserve the game that we all love.  Head trauma is my number 1 concern as a football coach and I do everything in my power to educate myself on the current science as well as techniques to keep my players as safe as possible.   

I absolutely agree that how the media portrays certain aspects of scientific research, and how the public consumes this information, is inherently flawed. For instance, the mention you made earlier of 95% of the brains studied showing signs of CTE was a significant finding. While, you were right in saying that these were brains donated by the families of players who, in many cases, showed signs of CTE, it's important to note that this still wasn't selection bias. The reason being, the research being performed on these brains wasn't published as a scientific experiment. It was published as a medical finding that called for scientific experimentation. Therefore, selection bias didn't factor in to those results.

We can't help how the media chooses to portray results of medical studies or scientific experiments. Most people don't even understand that a single scientific experiment does not equate to theory, nor do they understand that science proves nothing. It only serves to provide evidence either in support or negation of a particular hypothesis. These studies have to be reproducible and falsifiable and peer-reviewed. Many, many, many other studies must be performed in order to begin to turn a hypothesis into theory. In other words, a mountain of evidence would be required. This topic touches on relatively new science, so we won't know for many years what the true rates of change are.

From a statistical point of you, the studies being done in no way reflect upon the general population of all of boys/men that play football. The sample size is too small, the sample being examined( dead professional football players..) isn't representative of the whole population.

This would be like studying the dead bodies of every person that ate pizza and died from heart disease and making the inference that all of us who hit up Pizza Hut every few weeks will hit an early grave from a heart attack.

Honestly, concussions are serious; I picked up more than a few playing due to poor tackling/blocking form and inadequate equipment. I, personally, have had issues that may be have been caused by the concussions. At least that's what the neurologist told me. But, I'm certainly not representative of the entire population of those that have played football. I'm just a small fraction of a of fraction of folks that have dealt with concussions.

I believe that this stuff will just go away with time. Helmets are safer, better tackling/blocking form is being taught and we have protocols in place to deal with concussions. Americans love football more than they love the hype surrounding the concussions.

The best we can do as coaches is err on the side of caution when it comes to concussions. Follow the protocols put in place and pull a kid from the game if there's the slightest chance he's gotten his bell rung. This is the only thing that will put the majority of parents at ease. Parents don't need to be rational in this situation; they need to know that their kids are being taken care of.

This page is pretty powerful.

ctesociety.org/who

I see this posted a bunch in these discussions: helmets are better.

We as a profession MUST drop that as a defense. Helmets in NO way prevent concussions. Helmets are to prevent skull fractures. Skull fractures were a big part of the early 19th century push against football.

This is something entirely different.

"Riddell has good reason to not advertise the SpeedFlex as a concussion-preventer: it can't. As reported in the book League of Denial, the Federal Trade Commission ruled in 2013 that there was insufficient evidence to support a longstanding Riddell claim that its Revolution series of helmets "reduce concussions or the risk of concussions by 31 percent." That claim—based on a study conducted by former members of the National Football League's controversial and since-disbanded Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee, which was funded by Riddell—did not stand up to scientific scrutiny. The University of Michigan's Dr. Jeffrey Kutcher testified before the Senate Commerce Committee that "there is no significant data" to support Riddell's claim. And, as reported in League of Denial, Riddell even attempted to extend the claim to the youth versions of its Revolution line, which weren't included at all in the original study."

sports.vice.com/en_us/article/how-a-football-helmet-industry-titan-sells-the-false-promise-of-safety

I don't imagine strengthening the neck will reduce concussions by any discernible amount.

Good stuff JohnK. THANKS. I've often wondered about neck bridges w/o helmets and if they would be possibly the most effective.