Hollin, G. orcid.org/0000-0003-4348-8272 (2025) Who should mark the homework? Concussion, conflicts of interest, and the constitution of expertise. Critical Public Health, 35 (1). 2507854. ISSN 0958-1596
Abstract
Concussion in sport is increasingly understood as a public health crisis. A key facet of this crisis concerns the claim that industry-funded research results in conflicts of interest that fundamentally compromise scholarship. This poses a particular problem for policymakers when adjudicating upon who counts as an expert and what to do with the evidence that they provide. In this paper, I explore these matters in relation to the ‘Concussion in Sport’ report produced by the UK’s House of Commons’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee. I ask, first, which stakeholders submit evidence to the Committee and, second, how evidence provided by those stakeholders is marshalled within the report itself. I show that, despite concerns about conflicts of interest, a significant body of interdisciplinary scholarship is submitted to the Committee. The report itself, however, understands academic scholarship as being both deficient and compromised, drawing exclusively upon epidemiological and neuroscientific work. I conclude by suggesting such an approach compromises the committee’s own hope for an increasingly expansive notion of expertise.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. |
Keywords: | Concussion; Conflicts of Interest; Dementia; Expertise; Sport |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Sociological Studies (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number Wellcome Trust 222157/Z/20/Z |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 28 May 2025 14:53 |
Last Modified: | 09 Jun 2025 10:56 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Taylor and Francis Group |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/09581596.2025.2507854 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:227104 |