At a Senate committee last year, the NRL acknowledged the link between head injuries in contact sports and the neurodegenerative disease CTE. But a core member of the NRL’s concussion research group is also one of the most outspoken critics of the link between repeated head injury and CTE, calling it an “invented disease … conjured out of thin air”.

Today, Wendy Carlisle on why the science is still being contested and how the NRL justifies advancing a position that most scientists don’t agree with.