Playing football is almost certainly bad for your brain, but this article does a terrible job of making that case. The doctor in charge of the study says as much:
> The set of players posthumously tested by Dr. McKee is far from a random sample of N.F.L. retirees. “There’s a tremendous selection bias,” she has cautioned, noting that many families have donated brains specifically because the former player showed symptoms of C.T.E.
This is equivalent to finding NFL players who showed signs of cancer, and then testing them for cancer. Of course you're going to get a rate close to 100%. The article takes 10 paragraphs before pointing out that the rate of CTE among former NFL players is much lower.
This sort of sloppy journalism is counterproductive. It makes it much easier for football fans to discredit and ignore the problem. At best, it causes people to endorse good policies for bad reasons.
> The set of players posthumously tested by Dr. McKee is far from a random sample of N.F.L. retirees. “There’s a tremendous selection bias,” she has cautioned, noting that many families have donated brains specifically because the former player showed symptoms of C.T.E.
This is equivalent to finding NFL players who showed signs of cancer, and then testing them for cancer. Of course you're going to get a rate close to 100%. The article takes 10 paragraphs before pointing out that the rate of CTE among former NFL players is much lower.
This sort of sloppy journalism is counterproductive. It makes it much easier for football fans to discredit and ignore the problem. At best, it causes people to endorse good policies for bad reasons.