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How the NFL tried to manipulate a government study on football and brain injuries (Los Angeles Times):
“The National Institutes of Health seems to have discovered what communities across the land already know: The National Football League is an untrustworthy partner.
According to a report released Monday by the Democratic staff of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, the NFL pressured the NIH to cancel a $16-million grant to study football-related brain injuries to a prominent Boston brain researcher who the league claimed was biased. The NIH had found no evidence that the researcher, Robert Stern, was biased or subject to a conflict of interest. The House staff agreed. On the other hand, it did assert a conflict of interest on the part of one NFL medical advisor, who applied unsuccessfully for the same grant and then became a leading critic of the award to Stern…
To the committee staff, the fault in this case belongs almost entirely to the NFL. The league, it found, “improperly attempted to influence … grant selection” and injected itself into decision-making it should have known was “out of bounds for donors.”
Report: The National Football League’s Attempt to Influence Funding Decisions at the National Institutes of Health (opens PDF)
- Description: This report serves as an update on the Democratic Committee staff investigation of
claims that the National Football League (NFL) attempted to influence decisions on brain injury
research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The review has included requests for
information from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) at NIH,
the Foundation for the NIH (FNIH), and the NFL, briefings with staff from NIH, FNIH, and the
NFL, as well as a review of relevant documents and communications.
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