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N.F.L. Tried to Influence New Concussion Research, Congressional Study Finds

nytimes.com

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Re: N.F.L. Tried to Influence New Concussion Research, Congressional Study Finds

#41

Post by balls187 »

KevinEldon wrote: post #26
balls187 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good question, and I suspect that it's because the players who could influence that decision (the leaders and highly paid super star athletes), are not incentivized to sour their relationship with the NFL and the team owners over the health and well being of all players. That is, their individual goal is to maximize the money they make while they play, and fighting for better working conditions may run orthogo…

I think you're probably right and wonder then if it's not the players themselves who are to blame (at least when the fans/public gets "outraged" about this issue). It's awkward to assign (some) blame to the same class that contains the victims, but it seems in their own pursuit of wealth they might be forfeiting their own safety. Owners would care about the short-term safety of players so that they can realize their…

When you factor in that many of these athletes are young it makes sense why they aren't necessarily looking out for the long term self interest. It doesn't take too much searching to find once highly paid athletes having to work menial jobs post career, as they didn't take care of their finances.

And, I'd say there is blame all around:

Team owners (and by extension the League) wanting to maximize profits.

Players want to maximize salaries.

And the fans willing to continue to support the NFL as is.

Re: N.F.L. Tried to Influence New Concussion Research, Congressional Study Finds

#42

Post by woodman »

themartorana wrote: post #22
tlb wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of science research doesn't affect public policy. It's toward some goal, like making a process work better. Those scientists still need to be honest, but nobody is throwing big money at them to sway their agenda. Then sometimes, suddenly, huge money depends on a question of science. I assume concussion research was like this for a long time: they were just trying to find the best way to heal brains…

When an organization "funds" research that comes to a conclusion said organization knows to be false, that is fraud, outright. We should not accept fraud as "par for the course" or "we should expect no better." Actively attempting to defraud customers, employees, or government should be a crime .

That doesn't seem like a very well thought out way of defending a logical endeavor like scientific research. I don't know how you plan to learn what an "organization knows", but lets pretend that is economically feasible - what do you think the logical move is for these bad actors? Well there would be a pretty strong incentive to never "know" anything, so that wouldn't be very good. As it is now, if the funded research is bad then it won't survive for long, and neither will those with their names on the papers. Also, fraud is already a crime - but again I don't know how you plan on demonstrating the "attempting" part.

Re: N.F.L. Tried to Influence New Concussion Research, Congressional Study Finds

#44

Post by mikestew »

cheeze wrote: post #3

The problem that I see with the NFL is that they are essentially a monopoly on American Football. As a fan, I don't really have any choices. I detest many things that the NFL does, can't believe some of the players are allowed to play the game after what they do outside of work, etc. yet I have no option if I want to watch football. Combine this with the fact that NFL football is culturally ingrained in many peoples…

The "as a fan" part makes my solution difficult. Me, I just don't pay attention at all partly out of the issues you mention (to me, it's ethically along the lines of watching gladiators in ancient Rome; YMMV), and also because I just don't find it interesting. It does make me a little out of touch, for instance a coworker on Slack compared the gait of someone in the office to "Marshawn". I thought they misspelled "marshmallow". Oooooh, that explains those "beast mode" stickers that never made any sense until now.

I did, however, kind of go through the same thing with pro cycling (and cycling in general) once it turned out that, by my assessment, the whole sport was full of PEDs top-to-bottom. I just quit watching, and watch other sports like MotoGP. And you know what? I don't need to watch paid professionals spin their legs in circles. Maybe you don't need to watch 300 lb. men run into each other as hard as they can. Oh, you used to play football, hence your interest? I used to be a next-stop-is-a-pro-contract bike racer. Regional-level race official once the legs got old and the dreams of a pro contract had long since died. That's a sunk cost, and the whole thing disgusted me enough to just quit paying attention.

You won't right any wrongs by not watching football, make no mistake. But at some point one needs to weigh whether "being a fan" is more important than not participating in a part of popular culture that has aspects that you "detest".

Re: N.F.L. Tried to Influence New Concussion Research, Congressional Study Finds

#46

Post by r00fus »

oxide wrote: post #34
r00fus wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would gladly support a league of slightly worse players if it wasn't as scummy as the NFL has proven itself to be. Isn't this what the USFL and XFL were intended to be? Even if the other league were to focus on niches (like indoor football). I don't see how this changes without some anti-trust kind of oversight by a higher authority than the already profit-focused (with the consequential ethically blinders) NFL.

USFL was fine as a spring league and would have probably continued to this day if it was left as a spring league. There is a pretty good documentary[1] on Netflix about the USFL and how attempting to make it a fall league competing directly with the NFL essentially handed it a death sentence. I don't want to spoil anything, of course, so you'll have to watch it yourself to see who's bright idea that was. It's really…

So essentially you're saying that trying to compete with the NFL was the ticket to demise? Doesn't that sound like the NFL is a monopoly?

Re: N.F.L. Tried to Influence New Concussion Research, Congressional Study Finds

#47

Post by wiseleo »

m0llusk wrote: post #45

This sport will be dead in a generation or two. Parents don't want their kids doing something that demonstrably causes brain damage. Without a full cohort of kids involved the level of competition will starve off interest in the sport.

There will still be plenty of broke parents who will want to give their children that one shot at stardom. Take a look at backgrounds of fighters in boxing and MMA. These sports are explicitly about hurting the other person and people still volunteer to participate.

Re: N.F.L. Tried to Influence New Concussion Research, Congressional Study Finds

#48

Post by Retric »

cmsmith wrote: post #25
dluan wrote: post #11

In 200 years, when we look back on how science was funded, it will seem backwards and poorly designed. Big money has infiltrated politics, media & journalism, and of course science, but for some reason the public regards scientific research as still somewhat authentic and immune to corruption. This is far from the truth, especially in the U.S., there is hardly any authentic science left. Even those well intentioned r…

>there is hardly any authentic science left I'm sorry, but what? You list a half dozen of the hottest-button research areas, but those represent (with the exception of pharma) probably less than 2-3% of non-proprietary research. The rest of the iceberg is just normal scientists working on hard problems that aren't going to make anyone rich, and scraping by on whatever money they can find. And keeping the 'science=cor…

Hot button issues, like toxicity, health care, education, evolution, weight loss, endangered species, sleep, habitat, oral hygiene, etc. Just about anything related to either people, land, products, processes, faith, or stuff has someone who would like to influence the results.

Even if it's simply do the experiment 100 times until you get the result you want. Or just quietly pull the plug when it's not going the way you hope. There are many ways to manipulate even honest research done in good faith.

Re: N.F.L. Tried to Influence New Concussion Research, Congressional Study Finds

#49

Post by oxide »

r00fus wrote: post #46
oxide wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USFL was fine as a spring league and would have probably continued to this day if it was left as a spring league. There is a pretty good documentary[1] on Netflix about the USFL and how attempting to make it a fall league competing directly with the NFL essentially handed it a death sentence. I don't want to spoil anything, of course, so you'll have to watch it yourself to see who's bright idea that was. It's really…

So essentially you're saying that trying to compete with the NFL was the ticket to demise? Doesn't that sound like the NFL is a monopoly?

Oh, absolutely. I'm not disputing that even in the slightest.
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