Washington Post article: scientific consensus is mainstream CTE facts are exaggerated, misleading

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

or rather the crap Climate Change deniers us to protect short term corporate interests, while the rest of us will burn or drown because of their self interest and greed. And I say this with on dog in the fight since I will be dead before it because inevitable

I thought he was just using climate change to be funny because it was about to turn political.

 

[patfanken]

BTW- I always questioned Omalu's conclusions. I played 4 years of HS, 4 years in college, 2 years unsuccessfully "chasing the dream". If Omalu was correct their would be HUNDREDS of thousands of cases just from my era alone.

Clearly hitting your head in high speed to weigh collisions for 20 years which a lot of NFL players have done will NOT be good for your brain. But concluding that things like Pop Warner and HS football is more dangerous that handing a 16 year old the keys to a car is ludicrous, yet these over protective parents are doing just that without a thought. It boggles my mind.

Playing football in HS should be encouraged since the experience and what life lessons are learned is far more than the risk. Playing football in college is a step up in the risk category because of the speed and weight increases, but it doesn't stoop to the level Omalu projected.

Playing professionally is another step up as well. But as long as the participants are aware of the risks, the rewards are certainly self evident. (especially since they have taken so much of the contact out of the game)

 

[patfanken]

I thought he was just using climate change to be funny because it was about to turn political.

Yeah I got that, but I couldn't resist the knee-jerk reaction given the idiotic climate position this administration has fostered on us

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

Conclusion from all these comments:

Going to war would be the worst trauma for one’s brain, as a projectile can kill you on impact. Since there’s no war, we need to rank the brain-smashing activities that our kids are interested in and weight the risk:reward. However, it is necessary to engage in something that involves injuring one’s brain frequently.

 

[shmessy]

How dare you, especially when we know Florida and New York are days away from being fully submerged into the ocean.

I missed the part about that being "days away". Where did you hear THAT?

.

 

[Palm Beach Pats Fan]

Articles like this are why scientist hate talking to the media. Everything gets sensationalized in a way that distracts from the facts.

True, and books as well as movies on any scientific subject have the same issues. They are written, made, and edited for entertainment purposes, not for peer-reviewed scientific accuracy. They tend to make overly dramatic, simplified conclusions and to identify people as clear heroes or as clear villains.

He was an outsider to the field of CTE research. He gained access to postmortem brain tissue and in my opinion made some important findings with regard to football-related head injury (even injury from long-term, repeated, SUB-CONCUSSIVE blows), in that it resembles in some respects the effect of traumatic brain injury.

Did he gain fame and fortune from it? Sure. Did he exaggerate some of his findings? Quite possibly. Science is self-correcting, though, and others will test his conclusions with other postmortem analyses.

 

[primetime]

Since there’s no war

[cigarette falls from mouth]

 

[primetime]

BTW- I always questioned Omalu's conclusions. I played 4 years of HS, 4 years in college, 2 years unsuccessfully "chasing the dream". If Omalu was correct their would be HUNDREDS of thousands of cases just from my era alone.

Clearly hitting your head in high speed to weigh collisions for 20 years which a lot of NFL players have done will NOT be good for your brain. But concluding that things like Pop Warner and HS football is more dangerous that handing a 16 year old the keys to a car is ludicrous, yet these over protective parents are doing just that without a thought. It boggles my mind.

Playing football in HS should be encouraged since the experience and what life lessons are learned is far more than the risk. Playing football in college is a step up in the risk category because of the speed and weight increases, but it doesn't stoop to the level Omalu projected.

Playing professionally is another step up as well. But as long as the participants are aware of the risks, the rewards are certainly self evident. (especially since they have taken so much of the contact out of the game)

Problem is you can't really know the effects until you die, which isn't very helpful for you and your implication that there aren't that many people with tau coming from contact sports can't be confirmed or falsified until, well, everyone dies and donates their brain to science. (And then it's difficult to separate from, say, Alzheimer's or senile dementia in older patients.) It really makes the research difficult regardless of how it's carried out, there's just limits epistemologically.

The "everyone knows the risks" thing is the tough part. The risks weren't even really known until a decade ago and there's still a substantial amount of uncertainty about those risks. And the NFL has done its best to cover up all this **** and sweep it under the rug too.

Obviously, like, driving a car and drinking are very dangerous activities that people regularly engage in, but unlike football the former is kind of a necessity (especially almost anywhere in the US). Making driving and drinking safer is a good thing too!

 

[Joker]

The earth's mean temperature, in geological terms, has been far far higher than today's measurements....for 300 MILLION years during one period...that would be 35 degrees Celsius or NINETY FIVE degrees Fahrenheit. I'm not going to "sweat" the social justice warrior ministrations and breast beating that has become de riguer in this country.To wit....

 

[Tunescribe]

The earth's mean temperature, in geological terms, has been far far higher than today's measurements....for 300 MILLION years during one period...that would be 35 degrees Celsius or NINETY FIVE degrees Fahrenheit. I'm not going to "sweat" the social justice warrior ministrations and breast beating that has become de riguer in this country.To wit....

I didn't know dinosaurs suffered from CTE. Arthritis, yes -- CTE, no. Interesting.

 

[primetime]

I didn't know dinosaurs suffered from CTE. Arthritis, yes -- CTE, no. Interesting.

Well, I can think of someone who might suffer from some CTE...

 

[Joker]

Well, I can think of someone who might suffer from some CTE...

so, YOU throw stones from behind your bullet proof glass window, mocking me for stating FACT...and that indicates I have brain damage? Seems you've eaten so much bullshyt you've contracted "shyt for brains" disease.

 

[Vindicate]

Awhile back, I looked into writing a small series that examined misinformation and bad studies. For references, I was gonna hit some of the big notes - Antivaxxers, the proliferation of opioid prescription based on a bogus study, etc., - but I also wanted to highlight how frequently cited studies with bogus research methods can actually damage raising awareness for a real disease. CTE was going to be my cornerstone example.

The studies that doctor conducted cherry picked candidates who were heavily inundated with symptoms already. These studies were passed around like religion and I ****ing knew this would happen. It's a shame, because CTE is real. And bogus studies could be dampening the public's perception of it.

 

[primetime]

so, YOU throw stones from behind your bullet proof glass window, mocking me for stating FACT...and that indicates I have brain damage? Seems you've eaten so much bullshyt you've contracted "shyt for brains" disease.

You're right. Will you donate to my GoFundMe

 

[primetime]

Awhile back, I looked into writing a small series that examined misinformation and bad studies. For references, I was gonna hit some of the big notes - Antivaxxers, the proliferation of opioid prescription based on a bogus study, etc., - but I also wanted to highlight how frequently cited studies with bogus research methods can actually damage raising awareness for a real disease. CTE was going to be my cornerstone example.

The studies that doctor conducted cherry picked candidates who were heavily inundated with symptoms already. These studies were passed around like religion and I ****ing knew this would happen. It's a shame, because CTE is real. And bogus studies could be dampening the public's perception of it.

Yes, but it's impossible to avoid a biased convenience sample on this because you can't randomly sample a representative group, murder your sample, then pry open their skulls to check their brains. You study what you have, and unfortunately what you have is a very biased sample - the people most likely to donate their brains are those with the issue. But it's notable that even if the sample of brains studied in these small n convenience samples were the only brains with CTE among pro athletes, you'd have an epidemic.

 

[Tunescribe]

I missed the part about that being "days away". Where did you hear THAT?

.

He didn't. He's just being ignorantly sarcastic in a failed attempt at humor.

 

[Tunescribe]

Going to war would be the worst trauma for one’s brain, as a projectile can kill you on impact.

Disagree completely. Watching the New Jersey Jete is infinitely more traumatic.

 

[TheAdultintheRoom]

There's a certain segment of society that always has to be on a great crusade against some immense evil to prove their virtue. If there is no immense evil available, they will make one up or exaggerate a minor one.

 

[Tunescribe]

There's a certain segment of society that always has to be on a great crusade against some immense evil to prove their virtue. If there is no immense evil available, they will make one up or exaggerate a minor one.

How amazingly insightful. Did you reach this conclusion through years of intensive study, or simple conjecture off the top of your (pointed) head?

 

[shmessy]

He didn't. He's just being ignorantly sarcastic in a failed attempt at humor.

I was being sarcastic too. He was obviously parroting jokes from Russia Today or Sinclair Broadcasting......

.