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

primetime said:

you can't randomly sample a representative group, murder your sample, then pry open their skulls to check their brains.

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Tunescribe said:

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

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primetime said:

You're right. Will you donate to my GoFundMe

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Joker said:

you won't need it...you're gonna contract a severe case of fistophrenia, get institutionalized and eventually attached to AOC and flown back to Planet More-on(sic) on a space shuttle. Bon voyage!

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primetime said:

I apologize for joking that you may be brain damaged, clearly I was mistaken

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Joker said:

Obviously you have either forgotten or were never taught Fnord-weh's Ten Commandments...to wit

V: Thou shalt not joke

I'm no Moses but you keep bustin' my chops and I'll show you a Red sea, alright

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patfanken said:

or rather the crap Climate Change deniers use 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 no dog in the fight since I will be dead before it because inevitable

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primetime said:

The Post often does pretty good journalism! However, I really don't know if I trust the Post's sports page to be doing hard-hitting science journalism. I mean, the title says that he "built a career on distorted science" which is a completely explosive statement that isn't at all backed up by the relatively tame academic disagreements about images selected for an academic study in the body and the consensus about the existence of CTE and its association with playing football among all researchers interviewed therein. It's, like, interesting and weird that Omalu doesn't use the NIH definition of CTE, and yeah maybe that's a problem, but there's also very little meat about what that actually means for his research (except in the context of this Webster study, which nobody really seems to have any real issues with), and instead we get these weird musings about his supposed interest in celebrity and his role as an expert witness for Ford that has nothing to do with anything.

Rather, to someone who's dealt with this kind of thing, this seems to be pretty routine as such things go. Without the whole book and movie angle, this is at its heart relatively boring and honestly by the standards of academic stuff not even particularly acrimonious quibbles over scientific methodology... which is the heart of the scientific process! Not only is this not necessarily a bad thing, it's the way it's supposed to work.

Only here the author (and the editor, presumably, who's responsible for the misleading headline) chose to sensationalize it and, so far as I can tell, failed to ask Omalu his side of the story in a story specifically framed as an attack on his scientific integrity. And presumably there are also academics who would take the other side, that Omalu's methods are sound or whatever, but here we have just one side. To me that's really ugly journalism.

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Tony2046 said:

I enjoy reading your input on things like this. Thanks

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Tony2046 said:

I enjoy reading your input on things like this. Thanks

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1960Pats said:

I don't have a dog in that fight either, but I care about this topic because my children were forced to view Al Gore's video, like most of the kids in school at the time. That crap got my attention I'll tell ya.

Anyway, can we get back on topic please?

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1960Pats said:

You're welcome. Oh, wait, you weren't talking to me.

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Deus Irae said:

To be fair, and not being political, it's quite possible that kids ended up with CTE after pounding their heads against hard objects due to being forced to listen as Al Gore babbled on and on. Lord knows his voice and speech style lends itself to such things.

So it may be tangentially on topic.

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Joker said:

V: Thou shalt not joke

I'm no Moses but you keep bustin' my chops and I'll show you a Red sea, alright

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patfanken said:

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)

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mosi said:

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

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shmessy said:

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

.

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Jlaff said:

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

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