@article{ref1,
title=""Learning to listen to them and ask the right questions." Bennet Omalu, scientific objectivities, and the witnessing of a concussion crisis",
journal="Frontiers in sports and active living",
year="2021",
author="Hollin, Gregory",
volume="3",
number="",
pages="e672749-e672749",
abstract="The death of American Football player Mike Webster has become foundational to narratives of sport's twenty-first century concussion crisis. Bennet Omalu, the neuropathologist who conducted Webster's autopsy and subsequently diagnosed Webster with Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), has, likewise, become a central figure in the concussion crisis. Indeed, it is frequently argued that there is something about Omalu in particular that made it possible for him to &quot;witness&quot; CTE when the disease entity had hitherto remained invisible to a great many medics and scientists. In this article, and drawing upon auto/biographies, I consider Omalu's self-described mode of scientific witnessing which purportedly allowed him to (re)discover CTE. I find Omalu's described objectivity to be shaped by three factors: First, the importance of &quot;trained judgment&quot; within which Omalu's scientific training is emphasized. Second, the infusion of religiosity within scientific practice. Third, a self-described position as an &quot;outsider&quot; to both football and American culture. Throughout this analysis, I pay attention not only to the ways in which Omalu's narratives depart from conventional depictions of scientific objectivity; I also note the similarities with particular bodies of social scientific work, most notably within a feminist &quot;turn to care&quot; in Science and Technology Studies (STS) and related standpoint epistemologies. Following these analyses, I argue that, first, Omalu's writing affords the dead a &quot;response-ability&quot; that is often absent within analyses of the concussion crisis and, second, that a focus upon diverse forms of objectivity, such as those described in Omalu's work, complements existing work into concussion science that has foregrounded scientific conflict of interest.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="2624-9367",
doi="10.3389/fspor.2021.672749",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fspor.2021.672749"
}