NFL official admits football, CTE link

It's definitely not specious, and it should absolutely be researched more (though the bigger issue isn't that the studies haven't been going on long enough; it's the utter lack of control groups to understand the strength of even a correlative relationship; it's also about lack of consideration of confounders like, say, substance use and abuse). At the very least we need research demonstrating a mechanistic relationship between this pathological finding that defines CTE and the set of clinical symptoms popularly attributed to it; currently, that doesn't even exist. Because of this, comparing the state of research on CTE to that of climate change is incredibly off-base.

Beyond that, there are two huge issues with taking a potentially striking correlation (if the control group analysis demonstrates there is one) and running with it as fact. The first is that medical science has gotten itself into huge trouble with this before; for example, decades lost to cancer research because people got focused in on a viral cause after some early findings there. The second, and more humanistic, is that the current connotation of the conversation is that repeated head-trauma caused by sports leads to, in a large percentage of cases, irreversible, degenerative changes, and that atmosphere has led to people committing suicide after assuming they had it.

There are an incredibly broad number of reasons a person might feel they have personality changes, or memory loss, or motor slowing, not the least of which is major depressive disorder. Or substance abuse/withdrawal. Or, in the case of the latter two, normal aging. Or nutritional deficiencies. Or MS. Or whatever. The public perception of CTE as a known, understood entity may very well keep people who suffer from such things from seeking proper diagnosis and support. That, to me, is inexcusable.

CTE should be researched so that if indeed there is a causal connection between tau accumulation and neurodegeneration we can figure out how to treat it. But right now public dogma treats it like settled fact, and that is hurting people at risk for it much more than it is helping them. /soapbox

(Also, head trauma is bad with or without CTE. We don't need a boogeyman like it to shame leagues and teams into treating their athletes better.)

 

Every bit of that is excellent, but unfortunately, I don't think your last point is true. We need a boogeyman to shame teams and leagues into doing a better job of treating and protecting their athletes. The worst part of it is I don't even think that is enough. These people do understand the danger. They do hear from the public do to fear of CTE. Even with all that, they continue to come up short. The NFL continues to focus on appeasing the public rather than doing everything necessary to protect is athletes. That is why you see significant punishments for illegal hits and rule changes that added penalties for not only blows to the head, but also for athletes hitting with their helmets. Of course, the latter was mostly due to the Ryan Shazier injury.

What we don't see is penalties with real teeth for teams that violate the league's concussion protocols. It takes multiple violations just to get to the point of fining a team $100,000, which is nothing. First offenses should be costing teams draft picks. That's what would happen if the league really wanted to ensure that teams will protect their athletes.

 

That's fair. I meant that to be taken as "we don't need a boogeyman like CTE because concussion/immediate head trauma in-and-of itself should be enough to shame them about," but I see how it was taken the way you did. I am all for penalties with real teeth, and they are sadly necessary. I also think the more we beat athletes over the head (no pun intended) with the known, short-term consequences of not reporting concussion the better. Athletes are notoriously bad reporters for concussion symptoms because they are idiots who want to keep playing. The more we can get them to buy into that there are immediate consequences, like post-concussion syndrome and risk of death, from not reporting, the better that may get.

 

I do understand what you meant and I wasn't really arguing with your point. You are right that the knowledge we have should be enough. It just isn't, at least not yet. As you correctly pointed out, far too many athletes are stupid about reporting concussion symptoms. You have that desire to play, a tough-guy culture that makes reporting a problem a sign of weakness and likely diminished cognitive function due to the concussion. That is a combination that is bound to lead to bad decisions.

I just think that too many team owners will always put their own self-interest ahead of protecting the players.