New York Times report accuses the NFL of covering up concussions
In 1994, after several players retired early from football due to head injuries, NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue established an independent committee to conduct research on the relationship between concussions and football. Teams at the time were instructed to report any head injuries to the league, no matter the severity. Those reports were logged in code, and the data was only seen by a select number of committee members.
"It was understood that any player with a recognized symptom of head injury, no matter how minor, should be included in the study," one paper said, according to The Times.
In confidential peer-reviewed documents at the time, the concussion committee wrote that "all NFL teams participated" and that "all players were therefore part of this study" (all quotes via the Times).
As the Times noted, 887 concussions were reported over the six-year period from 1996-2001. This number "served as the backbone" for 13 peer-reviewed research papers the committee subsequently published.
But after decoding and analyzing the data (you can read about their decoding process here), the Times found that the NFL omitted more than 100 concussions - including those of Aikman, who was forced to retire early from football due to several head injuries.
Over this six-year span, The Times reported, several teams (including Aikman's Dallas Cowboys) reported no concussions whatsoever. The papers' conclusions, which downplayed the severity of concussions in the NFL, came under fire at the time. From The Times:
Dr. Robert Cantu, one of the peer reviewers who at the time criticized the committee's analyses, said, "It should be an unmistakable red flag that a team does not report any concussions over multiple years."
In all, more than 10% of all head injuries were not included in the NFL's data, according to The Times' report.
More, from The Times: