Latest McCrory retractions leave sport facing a reckoning over concussion

The words land with a slap. “There is no scientific evidence that sustaining several concussions over a sporting career will necessarily result in permanent damage.” They are from a December 2001 editorial in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, called “When to retire after concussion?”

It goes on to say that it is “neuromythology” that a player ought to retire after suffering multiple brain injuries. “The unstated fear behind this approach is that an athlete suffering repeated concussions will suffer a gradual cognitive decline similar to the so called punch-drunk syndrome or Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy seen in boxers. Based on published evidence this fear is unfounded.”

“When to retire after concussion?” must have been a reassuring read for athletes and the medics treating them unless, that is, they were already suffering from the problems it dismissed as myths. The BJSM is supposed to be one of the leading journals in sports medicine and yet here was a flagship editorial arguing that the issue had been “confused” by the “media and lay-press” and that post-concussive syndrome is actually “exceedingly rare in sports”.

If anything, the editorial explained, doctors who advised players to retire after suffering multiple concussions would leave themselves open to “medicolegal challenge” because they were going against the science.

Twenty years later, when it comes to the science it feels like reading one of those 1930s adverts that recommend cigarettes for your health. It is bad enough that the editorial was published at all in that form and that is before you know that the man who wrote it, Dr Paul McCrory, was the journal’s editor-in-chief and went on to become one of the most single most influential figures in