NY Times Calls BS on NFL Concussion Research

They Times did more than that. They suggested some sort of deeper connection between the two entities. I just thought it confused the issue.

 

That we're even talking about the tobacco comparison suggests to me that it's too distracting. The story didn't need it to be powerful.

 

Exactly. The focus needs to be on the NFL and its history of covering up the concussion problem.

 

To the NFL, tobacco = shiny object.

 

So smoking causes concussions?

 

Yep. Nobody is arguing about the really damning information; they're criticizing the story because of an unnecessary comparison. As long as the focus stays on the silly comparison, the NFL wins.

 

And that is the fault of the writing, but the damning information is there. The NFL has been using those studies for years and it is clearly bullshit.

 

It's like a high school kid who uses cut-and-paste for an entire assignment and actually thinks he accomplished something.

 

Show me the rubric!

 

You've heard that exact response from a student, haven't you?

 

In all honesty, no. Usually I only hear it from some very low-level functionary who's managed to get control of some tiny little piece of the bureaucracy and then is trying to leverage that piece into more power and control. For example, the first rubric I ever had to deal with was imposed, by some dipshit in the graduate school (which has since been disbanded) who'd concluded we needed rubrics for fucking PhD dissertations. The dipshit -- who didn't hold a doctoral degree, mind you -- pushing for this said we needed to quantify how well our students were doing, and a rubric was the best way to do so. When pushed for evidence regarding this "best way," old rubric-pusher pointed to, kid you not, those used by two on-line, for-profit universities for their masters programs.

When it because obvious that the easiest thing to do was to simply accommodate, on my proposal this is pretty much the rubric we adopted:

Acceptability (0% = "Not Acceptable", 100% = "Acceptable)

Now, every dissertation that's accepted has a sheet in it with this table, and 100s from every member of the committee.