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Comment by kejaed | Hacker News Reader

An investigative piece was released yesterday from the Hamilton Spectator in Ontario where McMaster University researchers studied the brains of 20 living former Canadian Football League players. It didn't turn out particularly well.

"Study shows ‘disastrous’ damage in brains of retired CFL players" http://3downnation.com/2017/08/30/study-shows-disastrous-dam...

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I didn't see anywhere if these were just randomly selected players or players who volunteered because they thought something was wrong.

I know there was another study where they found a shockingly high percentage of the people studied had issues. However, in that study it was all volunteers who suspected something was wrong. Well that doesn't mean that high of a percentage of players actually have issues just the ones who suspect issues actually have issues. The studies need a little more work before I believe that every person playing football has a brain worse than a non-football player.

I'm sure you could find that if you found the study rather than an article about it (though I'm not sure if there is a scientific journal paper attached to this or where or how it will be published). The article says they compared to "healthy control subjects of similar ages". Presumably, what they are controlling the for is the occupation of being a football player, since that is the entire point of the study. Also this part

"Noseworthy was asked if there’s any chance the players’ results aren’t connected to football.

“No, this is football,” he said. “That’s the common denominator.”"

Oof. There are CFL players with day-jobs. These aren't NFL quadzillionaires.

The average career of an NFL player is something like 2 years. The vast majority of people who play in the NFL go and get day jobs when their career is done. Most don't save any of their playing money.

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