Risks of long-term neurological damage in pro football players, once pooh-poohed by league officials, is , according to Saurabh Jha, MD, writing in Health News Review.
Exhibit 1: coverage of a released earlier this week in which 99% of NFL players' brains examined at autopsy showed signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy. As MedPage Today's Perry Wilson, MD, pointed out, this was not a random sample of deceased players; most of the analyses were requested by family members on the basis of symptoms.
Nevertheless, headlines and the stories below them in major media, including Fox, CNN, and TIME all suggested the high rate of CTE applied to football players generally.
Jha said the consumer media could be doing a better job of conveying these subtle but important caveats, even in headlines.