Concussion in sport: It's time to drop the tobacco analogy

The analogy between smoking tobacco and sport-related concussions (SRCs) was initially made in a US Congressional Committee of Inquiry in 2009.¹ The inference was one of institutional malpractice, with ‘big tobacco’ evoked to convey concerns that the NFL had manipulated scientific evidence for its own commercial ends. Subsequently, the analogy has been used to compare the causal relationships between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer and SRCs and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE).² It is our contention that the analogy (used in either sense) detracts from the complex concerns that now confront researchers and, as such, has become detrimental to advancing the development of science and potential solutions.