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Interesting stuff here. We know the the WaPo is no fan of Roger and the goons, so coming from this publication maybe worth a read...Florio also picked it up.
Basic gist of it is that the celebrity doctor and face of the cause Bennet Olamu has greatly exaggerated the risk of CTE, used shoddy scientific methods, and has essentially attached himself to the disease to become rich and famous, while accusing any skeptics of being paid off. In reality there are a lot of academic brain scientists who are not paid for their research who believe these CTE conclusions are incorrect. The disease does exist, but many of the brain scan photos you see are not CTE (it is some other stuff that occurs in the brain), the risk of dying from this disease from playing in the NFL is closer to 5% and nowhere near the certain death that it's been made out to be.
There's a lot of information in here.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/sports/cte-bennet-omalu/
Bennet Omalu “exaggerates his accomplishments and dramatically overstates” the risks of CTE in contact sports
Florio's cliff notes:
When it comes to the NFL’s hypersensitivity to brain health over the past decade, Dr. Bennet Omalu gets most of the credit for sparking the change. Based on a new article in the Washington Post, however, Omalu has a far different reputation among those whose work focuses on brain science.
As explained by Will Hobson of the Post, brain researchers have reached a “wide consensus” that Omalu “routinely exaggerates his accomplishments and dramatically overstates the known risks of CTE and contact sports, fueling misconceptions about the disease.” Hobson bases that conclusion on interviews with more than 50 experts in the field, and on a review of more than 100 papers from medical journals.
Omalu has claimed credit for both the discovery and the naming of Chronic Traumatic Encephelopathy, or CTE. He didn’t discover it nor name it, however. And there are questions among researchers as to whether Omalu correctly diagnoses the condition, including in his seminal paper concluding that the late Mike Webster had CTE.
“His criteria don’t make sense to me,” said Dr. Ann McKee, one of the leading experts in the CTE field. “I don’t know what he’s doing. . . . My God, if people were actually following [Omalu’s] criteria, the prevalence of this disease would be enormous, and there’s absolutely no evidence to support that.”
Omalu, as Hobson explains, responds to criticism by accusing detractors of having financial motivations. Omalu, however, has a clear dollars-and-cents reason for saying what he says and doing what he does. Per the report, Omalu charges a minimum of $10,000 to serve as an expert witness in CTE litigation. Likewise, he charges $27,500 per appearance as a public speaker.
Basic gist of it is that the celebrity doctor and face of the cause Bennet Olamu has greatly exaggerated the risk of CTE, used shoddy scientific methods, and has essentially attached himself to the disease to become rich and famous, while accusing any skeptics of being paid off. In reality there are a lot of academic brain scientists who are not paid for their research who believe these CTE conclusions are incorrect. The disease does exist, but many of the brain scan photos you see are not CTE (it is some other stuff that occurs in the brain), the risk of dying from this disease from playing in the NFL is closer to 5% and nowhere near the certain death that it's been made out to be.
There's a lot of information in here.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/sports/cte-bennet-omalu/
Bennet Omalu “exaggerates his accomplishments and dramatically overstates” the risks of CTE in contact sports
Florio's cliff notes:
When it comes to the NFL’s hypersensitivity to brain health over the past decade, Dr. Bennet Omalu gets most of the credit for sparking the change. Based on a new article in the Washington Post, however, Omalu has a far different reputation among those whose work focuses on brain science.
As explained by Will Hobson of the Post, brain researchers have reached a “wide consensus” that Omalu “routinely exaggerates his accomplishments and dramatically overstates the known risks of CTE and contact sports, fueling misconceptions about the disease.” Hobson bases that conclusion on interviews with more than 50 experts in the field, and on a review of more than 100 papers from medical journals.
Omalu has claimed credit for both the discovery and the naming of Chronic Traumatic Encephelopathy, or CTE. He didn’t discover it nor name it, however. And there are questions among researchers as to whether Omalu correctly diagnoses the condition, including in his seminal paper concluding that the late Mike Webster had CTE.
“His criteria don’t make sense to me,” said Dr. Ann McKee, one of the leading experts in the CTE field. “I don’t know what he’s doing. . . . My God, if people were actually following [Omalu’s] criteria, the prevalence of this disease would be enormous, and there’s absolutely no evidence to support that.”
Omalu, as Hobson explains, responds to criticism by accusing detractors of having financial motivations. Omalu, however, has a clear dollars-and-cents reason for saying what he says and doing what he does. Per the report, Omalu charges a minimum of $10,000 to serve as an expert witness in CTE litigation. Likewise, he charges $27,500 per appearance as a public speaker.
