Hacker News Reader

Comment by grogenaut | Hacker News Reader

Summary: a national football league player, and PhD in math from mit, John Urschel, abruptly retired 2 days after a study showing 99% of retired NFL players from a study group had chronic brain issues (Cte). This is right before training starts for the season.

Edit: updates. Will point out that any summary is going to miss some facts as it's a summary. But I think people might be more likely to read the article if they could decipher the title. I like the Ravens and I assumed this was a cto of a game company yc startup who quit from the title.

View on HN

> a study showing 99% of NFL players had chronic brain issues (Cte)

Just to quibble but I understood that the study revealed that 99% of the group inspected had CTE. The group was not intended to be cross-section of the general population of NFL players. Not to trivialize the results but I think you extended them beyond what they said.

Fixed I think

The study was definitely not a representative sample. On the other hand, if it turns out that the sample was as biased as possible, such that every single player with CTE was in the study, that would still put the incidence at 9%, which is crazy high.

Having played football through college then aussie rules football for another 9 years I'd definitely like to see some numbers on things like that, recreational hockey, rugby, etc. Not sure how hard it would be to be checked myself.

That said, according to my mom I was a complete ahole until I started playing football in 8th grade when I completely mellowed out and started focusing on somthing. Most other sports didn't click with me; I think I needed organized competitive team based wall punching to take out random teenage anger. It's just that maybe I would have taken up golf earlier :)

So if the contact or a certain form of contact is the issue, lets either change football to not really have these risks or invent another sport. I mean they're all invented anyway.

The only current test for CTE is dissecting the brain. So for the time being, testing is limited to the dead. I wouldn't be in a rush to get checked.

Hrm... weighing the alternatives... it will get rid of this summer cold I have though.

> if it turns out that the sample was as biased as possible

The researcher never claimed it was a sample that one would expect with a scientific study (e.g. control group, test group, variance by age, race, etc.) From the original NYT article:

> 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.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that bias would be unexpected. I just wanted to point out that even in the absolute worst case where the bias of this simple turns out to be as high as it possibly could be, the results are still crazy bad.

Another important consideration is NFL carriers are also much shorter now, the average is less than 3 years which should make a rather dramatic difference.

Jackie Slater for comparison was a lineman for 20 seasons (1976-1995). And George Blanda had 26 seasons as a kicker and quarterback.

I assume you meant to say "NFL careers"?

For a second there, I thought you were talking about the average height of NFL running backs, and I was very confused...

. . . a study showing 99% of NFL players had chronic brain issues (Cte)"

This is not exactly true. The study required volunteers, and from what I understand, the families who volunteered already suspected brain damage, so it's not really a representative study. It's still very alarming, though.

V0.0.2 to address your concerns. Still in alpha and peer review. Expecting public release soon.

Totally agree. On the NYT article about the study:

"But 110 positives remain significant scientific evidence of an N.F.L. player’s risk of developing C.T.E., which can be diagnosed only after death. About 1,300 former players have died since the B.U. group began examining brains. So even if every one of the other 1,200 players had tested negative — which even the heartiest skeptics would agree could not possibly be the case — the minimum C.T.E. prevalence would be close to 9 percent, vastly higher than in the general population."

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/25/sports/footba...

That same player is a PhD candidate in mathematics. I think that's important.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com