Controversy brewing around the NFL, concussions, research funding and conflicts of interest

The NFL Needs Dis­tance From Its Brain-Injury Fund­ing (The Wall Street Journal):

“Despite its immense pop­u­lar­i­ty among spec­ta­tors and play­ers, foot­ball is fac­ing an exis­ten­tial threat due to the long-term health risks pre­sent­ed by repet­i­tive injuries to the head. A new dis­ease has even been asso­ci­at­ed with these injuries—chronic trau­mat­ic encephalopa­thy, or CTE, the sub­ject of the recent Will Smith movie, “Con­cus­sion.”

Evi­dence com­piled by ESPN’s “Out­side the Lines” revealed that the NFL has favored some league-friend­ly sci­en­tists over oth­ers by direct­ing where fund­ing is award­ed. There is a trou­bling asso­ci­a­tion between views on the sci­ence of con­cus­sions and the close­ness of rela­tion­ship of some sci­en­tists with the NFL. Despite some fund­ing going to inde­pen­dent researchers, one researcher quipped, “It felt like we were going back to the stage where the peo­ple who were fund­ed by Big Tobac­co were say­ing smok­ing is not harmful.”

To learn more:

• Study: Trau­mat­ic Brain Injury patients with high cog­ni­tive reserve recov­er 7 times better
• NFL donates $30 mil­lion to improve con­cus­sion & brain injury care
• Trend: Soft­ware-based assess­ments of mem­o­ry & cog­ni­tion to detect con­cus­sions after head trauma
• Neu­roimag­ing stud­ies: In soc­cer, over one thou­sand “head­ers” per year can lead to brain injury and cog­ni­tive impairment