Study says 40% of deceased athletes under 30 had CTE

[Cobra Mgr]

Based on 152 donors. Insane.

[Brad K]

What kind of athletes? Should everyone stop playing tennis now? How about shuffleboard? No one can tell without clicking which makes it clickbait.

[Westheim]

I assume football means eggball, not soccerball.

Anecdotally, most young soccerballers that die, do so because of undiagnosed heart conditions.

Edit: Oh that's all deaths, including not during sports. Sorry, I was being dense.

[Le Grande Orange]

Two points:

(1) Never trust the media's reporting on a scientific study. They almost always get something wrong, or misunderstand or exaggerate what the study is saying. Instead, read the study for oneself if at all possible.

(2) Exhibit some skepticism over the source study until its findings are replicated. Peer review is not what it once was, given recent examples of questionable review practices and associations between the study authors and reviewers when the published studies had significant errors that should have been caught during the peer review process.

[BPS]

The ESPN report, in particular the headline, could have been better written as some might read it as making statements about the prevalence of brain injuries in young athletes.

We read in the actual study:

This study has some limitations. We did not evaluate the incidence or prevalence of CTE...in young contact sport athletes and other individuals exposed to RHIs, and no estimates of incidence or prevalence can be implied or concluded from this study.

bold added. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...rticle/2808952

That's because they didn't use a random sample of brains of athletes.

More:

This study is constrained to brain donors whose families desired a neuropathologic examination after their loved one’s death, primarily White male football players.

So the brains they studied were believed to have possibly been damaged by CTE.

That said, it is sad that many young people have CTE even though they played their sport during years in which the danger of CTE were known, and protocols and equipment to deal with potential CTE were increasingly available.

[BPS]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

...(2) Exhibit some skepticism over the source study until its findings are replicated. Peer review is not what it once was, given recent examples of questionable review practices and associations between the study authors and reviewers when the published studies had significant errors that should have been caught during the peer review process.

It's hard to know if peer review is better or worse than it "once was."

Certainly many high profile problems with some academic studies have some to light, but that might be because after-the-fact scrutiny of studies might be occurring more frequently now than in the past.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by BPS

It's hard to know if peer review is better or worse than it "once was."

Certainly many high profile problems with some academic studies have some to light, but that might be because after-the-fact scrutiny of studies might be occurring more frequently now than in the past.

A fair point. Certainly, it does seem peer review's reputation has taken a hit in recent years.

[BPS]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

...it does seem peer review's reputation has taken a hit in recent years.

Do you have particular examples for what has, in your eyes, led to this?

[mytreds]

Bread and circuses.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by Westheim

I assume football means eggball, not soccerball.

Anecdotally, most young soccerballers that die, do so because of undiagnosed heart conditions.

Edit: Oh that's all deaths, including not during sports. Sorry, I was being dense.

Soccer IIRC has some issues with CTE too - I think the practice of heading is blamed - although of course not nearly to the level that American football does. I do think American football has a massive, massive day of reckoning coming. I'm not 100% sure this "study", which is really only saying "hey, people whose families thought they had negative effects from CTE are most likely right" tells us anything more about that except that, well, what we kind of already knew was going to be true, is going to be true.

I'll admit, when it comes to American football it puts me in a real quandary. I loved football growing up and as a fat kid it was the sport I was able to play in high school (in fact, I didn't move on to college primarily because my dad smoked like a chimney and I had issues breathing which in turn meant I couldn't run more than like 10 yards without wheezing and collapsing). I also remember getting my bell rung *hard* in practice several times even though I didn't play very much until my senior year and in retrospect I'm kind of thankful that I didn't go any further with it. At the same time I enjoy the game to this day for its strategy and it just kills me to understand that a lot of the things I like best - line play and, let's be honest, big hits on defense - are also the things that contribute the most to long-term injury and mental unwellness.

It sucks. I've sort of walked away from the game before and probably I'll have to do so again just for my own peace of mind.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by BPS

Do you have particular examples for what has, in your eyes, led to this?

The big one that I recall (which I expect few others noticed) was the study published in The Lancet back in May of 2020 ("Hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine with or without a macrolide for treatment of COVID-19: a multinational registry analysis"). The study looked at HCQ as a treatment for COVID and came down against it.

However, a few sharp-eyed people on Twitter noticed something odd with the data. They dug into it and soon found there was no way the data could be what was presented. Indeed, it turned out the data appeared to be entirely fraudulent. The study was retracted by The Lancet less than two weeks after it had been published.

More recently, there was the Stanford president (Marc Tessier-Lavigne) who resigned over allegations of having used fraudulent data in some of his work; the FSU criminology professor (Eric Stewart) who was fired over having used fake data in published studies; and a Harvard professor (Francesca Gino, ironically a researcher in the topic of honesty) was accused of having used fake data in some of her published studies, and the initial investigation supports the allegations.

And, of course, there is Retraction Watch which keeps a tally of peer-reviewed studies which later get retracted.

[BPS]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

The big one that I recall (which I expect few others noticed) was the study published in The Lancet back in May of 2020 ("Hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine with or without a macrolide for treatment of COVID-19: a multinational registry analysis"). The study looked at HCQ as a treatment for COVID and came down against it.

However, a few sharp-eyed people on Twitter noticed something odd with the data. They dug into it and soon found there was no way the data could be what was presented. Indeed, it turned out the data appeared to be entirely fraudulent. The study was retracted by The Lancet less than two weeks after it had been published.

The retraction of that particular study looms large for only some people who, for whatever reason, wanted hydroxychloroquine to work for COVID.

And, so far as I can tell, it wasn't "sharp-eyed people on Twitter" that lead to the demise of that article but "over 100 scientists from across the world flagged discrepancies in the research in an open letter to the journal's editor." https://www.deccanchronicle.com/scie...retracted.html

The scientific community cleaned up this mess quickly. And, of course, later studies confirmed that hydroxychloroquine is worthless for treating COVID.

Yes, one needs to be very cautious in accepting any particular study. But it is the media that plays up individual studies. But using the media's occasional misuse of studies to question all peer-reviewed studies seems like a bad idea. Science is a process where things are claimed, published, challenged, attacked, revised, and sometimes rejected. Outright fraud is very rare. Real-world science is messy, but in the end the knowledge generated by science is often superior to many other types of knowledge.

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by BPS

Yes, one needs to be very cautious in accepting any particular study. But it is the media that plays up individual studies.

And Cobra loves it.

[Cobra Mgr]

This one probably has CTE.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by BPS

The retraction of that particular study looms large for only some people who, for whatever reason, wanted hydroxychloroquine to work for COVID.

And, so far as I can tell, it wasn't "sharp-eyed people on Twitter" that lead to the demise of that article but "over 100 scientists from across the world flagged discrepancies in the research in an open letter to the journal's editor." https://www.deccanchronicle.com/scie...retracted.html

The scientific community cleaned up this mess quickly. And, of course, later studies confirmed that hydroxychloroquine is worthless for treating COVID.

Yes, one needs to be very cautious in accepting any particular study. But it is the media that plays up individual studies. But using the media's occasional misuse of studies to question all peer-reviewed studies seems like a bad idea. Science is a process where things are claimed, published, challenged, attacked, revised, and sometimes rejected. Outright fraud is very rare. Real-world science is messy, but in the end the knowledge generated by science is often superior to many other types of knowledge.

So weird that he hasn't responded to you... it's like the original guy was just attempting to snipe a relatively non-political post to make a political comment and then slunk away when called out or something...

[BPS]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

So weird that he hasn't responded to you... it's like the original guy was just attempting to snipe a relatively non-political post to make a political comment and then slunk away when called out or something...

Sometimes it's best to let some discussions just fade away.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by BPS

Sometimes it's best to let some discussions just fade away.

True. My dog in there is that this is not exactly the first time this has happened. You're completely right and hell, there's even a point to be made that neither "side" has the market cornered on facts, but that felt like nothing of the sort and just more of attempting to spread FUD in lieu of actual arguments.

It really sucks because I feel like 10 years ago the subject was not like that. I'm not going to rehash what happened since that time but... it's sad more than anything else.

[BPS]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

True. My dog in there is that this is not exactly the first time this has happened. You're completely right and hell, there's even a point to be made that neither "side" has the market cornered on facts, but that felt like nothing of the sort and just more of attempting to spread FUD in lieu of actual arguments.

It really sucks because I feel like 10 years ago the subject was not like that. I'm not going to rehash what happened since that time but... it's sad more than anything else.

FUD = Fear, uncertainty and doubt?

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by BPS

FUD = Fear, uncertainty and doubt?

Yep, the old IBM(?) acronym.

[Ragnar]

There's risk in a lot of the things we do for entertainment. Many jobs come with risk. CTE may be a fairly new discovery, but it is not new.