Applied Sports Science newsletter – February 4, 2017

… SN: Have you talked to Bruno Caboclo about the transition you’ve made from a similar position that he’s currently in?

LN: I don’t know anymore. I don’t know anything more to say to Bruno. We had the conversation many times about being ready and being patient. But it’s hard. I told him not one time— we’ve had that conversation maybe 100 times— because we both grew up together the same year, same franchise. Right now I made that step forward. Anytime when I can I try to remind him it is possible I do. Just trust in God and trust the process and when you get there doesn’t matter if you play five or thirty minutes, you’ve got to play your best. Now I play 25 minutes a night but before I used to play two. In these two or three minutes you can gain the coach’s trust and he might keep you in the rotation. You have to be ready to play. You have to make sure Bruno see’s that and stays patient.

… Brady has long been the most famous client of House and Dedeaux (who recently bought House out). Conversely, Ryan, is among the newest quarterbacks to come aboard. The results are what tie the two together here.

The results of the past few years are what pushed Ryan to House and Dedeaux in the first place. Ryan went to California last January for a three-day evaluation. He left with a list of things to work on. Six weeks later, he traveled back for another four days, then Dedeaux joined Ryan and his offensive teammates in Fort Lauderdale for their pre-offseason program workouts.

Then, during OTAs, Dedeaux went to Atlanta for troubleshooting, and Ryan went back to California for another four days during the break between the Falcons’ June minicamp and the July start to training camp.

I’ve been training to jump higher ever since I can remember. For years, my main measurement tool was how high I could get my hand on a basketball net, then the rim, and eventually the square on the top of the backboard. In high school, running parallel to this, I began the magic of measurement via a crossbar suspended between two metal standards—an event known to many as “high jump.”

Our brains need what is known as “knowledge of result” or “KR,” as Frans Bosch often alludes to, in order to hit new levels of performance. Knowledge of result (how high did you jump/how far did you throw/how fast did you run) is what gives our subconscious mind the means to determine whether what we are doing in training is actually working. The subconscious mind often cares less in regards to many traditional cues and instructions.

Knowledge of result isn’t only numbers. It can also revolve around body positions, such as keeping the head fixed after clearing a hurdle, where the brain must self-organize a strategy for the body to work in this context.

More bad news for insomniacs and those of us who struggle to get enough sleep at night. Lack of sleep definitely affects your performance the next day, and probably for a longer period of time than you might expect, according to a new study.

Among the findings: Two consecutive nights of less than six hours could leave you sluggish for the following six days. (Surprised? You aren’t alone: This stat sparked a gasp of dismay at my office staff meeting.) Researchers also found that staying up an extra hour, even if followed by a full night’s sleep, is correlated with slower performance the next day. But going to bed an hour earlier than normal has a negligible effect.

Human movement is a fascinating topic and Player Development Project is fortunate enough to have discovered a group of researchers applying ideas of Taijiquan (Tai Chi) in a football context in South Africa. Researcher, Dr. Laurie Rauch discusses some of the science behind human movement in sport.

An athlete’s movement on the sports field is largely an automatic process. Coordination of movement best left to subcortical brain structures. Thinking kept to a minimum. The only conscious part of movement should be the goal of the intended movement; while the movement itself is essentially a chain of reflexes. This remarkable ‘automated’ process enables world class athletes to move at speeds that seemingly defy the laws of nature often under extremes of pressure.

Objectives

The aim was to compare the effect of upper and lower body high-intensity exercise on chosen genes expression in athletes and non-athletes.
Method

Fourteen elite male artistic gymnasts (EAG) aged 20.6 ± 3.3 years and 14 physically active men (PAM) aged 19.9 ± 1.0 years performed lower and upper body 30 s Wingate Tests. Blood samples were collected before, 5 and 30 minutes after each effort to assess gene expression via PCR.
Results

Significantly higher mechanical parameters after lower body exercise was observed in both groups, for relative power (8.7 ± 1.2 W/kg in gymnasts, 7.2 ± 1.2 W/kg in controls, p = 0.01) and mean power (6.7 ± 0.7 W/kg in gymnasts, 5.4 ± 0.8 W/kg in controls, p = 0.01). No differences in lower versus upper body gene expression were detected for all tested genes as well as between gymnasts and physical active man. For IL-6 m-RNA time-dependent effect was observed.
Conclusions

Because of no significant differences in expression of genes associated with cellular stress response the similar adaptive effect to exercise may be obtained so by lower and upper body exercise.

BACKGROUND:

We aimed to examine the validity of an ice hockey-specific complex test (IHCT) and nonspecific off-ice tests for sports performance.
METHODS:

Eighteen professional athletes (27.4 ± 6.0 years) underwent the IHCT, maximal strength squat tests, an endurance cycling test (PWC 170) and posturography during in the first week of the pre-seasonal training. The IHCT included parameters of load (e.g., 10m and 30m sprint, transition and weave agility without and with puck, slap and wrist shots before and after the test). The players were closely accompanied during the season of competition (seven month) in order to collect match performance data. Based on these data, we calculated a match performance score (MPS) for each player.
RESULTS:

Stability indicator (r2=0.39), weave agility with puck (r2=0.39), maximal relative squat (r2=0.37) and frequency band F7-8 (r2=0.35) proved to be the most valid tests. However, with the MPS as dependent variable, 21 of 44 parameters tested (48%) explained 10% or more of variance.
CONCLUSION:

The current findings suggest that postural stability, cerebellar control mechanisms and concentric maximum leg strength are the most important predictors of MPS. Regarding IHCT, actions with the puck under fatigue conditions and the ability to recover quickly are highly relevant for ice hockey players.

… Locomotor efficiency is lower during the latter stages of each half of competitive soccer match-play, a trend synonymous with observations of increased injury incidence and fatigue in these periods. Locomotor efficiency may be a valuable metric to identify fatigue and heightened injury risk during soccer training and match-play. In summary, PlayerLoadTM has a moderate to high degree of test-retest reliability and near perfect convergent validity in comparison to HR and VO2 at both the SCAP and COM during incremental treadmill running. Moderate to high test-retest reliability was further observed during SAFT90. For both treadmill running and SAFT90, PlayerLoadTM was underestimated when worn at the SCAP in comparison to the COM, with different loading contributions observed in the three planes. Caution should be applied in making between-athlete contrasts in loading, and when using recordings from the SCAP to identify lower-limb movement patterns due to this underestimation. However, locomotor efficiency was lower during the latter stages of each half of SAFT90 and competitive soccer match-play, a trend synonymous with observations of increased injury incidence and fatigue in these period.

Take Home Message: Overtrained athletes have abnormal inflammatory and anabolic responses to exercise, indicating that their body is not responding to exercise the way that it should.

The physical demands and combative nature of rugby lead to notable levels of muscle damage. In professional rugby, athletes only have a limited timeframe to recover following training sessions and competition. Through the implementation of recovery strategies, sport scientists, practitioners and coaches have sought to reduce the effect of fatigue and allow athletes to recover faster. Although some studies demonstrate that recovery strategies are extensively used by rugby athletes, the research remains equivocal concerning the efficacy of recovery strategies in rugby. Moreover, given the role of inflammation arising from muscle damage in the mediation of protein synthesis mechanisms, some considerations have been raised on the long-term effect of using certain recovery modalities that diminish inflammation. While some studies aimed to understand the effects of recovery modalities during the acute recovery phase (<48 h post-match), others investigated the effect of recovery modalities during a more prolonged timeframe (i.e. during a training week). Regarding the acute effectiveness of different recovery modalities, cold water immersion and contrast baths seem to provide a beneficial effect on creatine kinase clearance, neuromuscular performance and delayed onset of muscle soreness. There is support in the literature concerning the effect of compression garments on enhancing recovery from delayed onset of muscle soreness; however, conflicting findings were observed for the restoration of neuromuscular function with the use of this strategy. Using a short-duration active recovery protocol seems to yield little benefit to recovery from rugby training or competition. Given that cold modalities may potentially affect muscle size adaptations from training, their inclusion should be treated with caution and perhaps restricted to certain periods where athlete readiness is more important than increases in muscle size.

Luke Walton followed his father to Boston at the height of the Celtics’ dynasty. What he saw would inform the coach he has become — and what he hopes his Lakers will someday be.

This post is about our collaboration to the development and validation of iOS apps for sport performance analysis. These four apps are cheap, easy to use, only require an iOS device (preferably with slow motion camera) and integrate published algorithms for biomechanical analysis of human movement. They have all be presented and compared to reference methods in published scientific studies.

“Managing and synthesizing accurate gait data is essential to outcomes-driven healthcare, however, every successful system purchase demands an equally successful system implementation,” said ProtoKinetics co-founder Michael Rowling. “ProtoKinetics promotes our products based on exceptional quality, support and services. That’s why in 2016, hospitals, universities, private clinics, device manufactures and several pharmaceutical companies acquired our products.”

Their support team includes: Rowling, BS (Kinesiology) with a global view of healthcare and attention to researchers’ and clinicians’ requirements, Youan Chang, PhD (Computer Science & Applied Mathematics) a leading innovator in statistics and signal processing, Patrick Roscher, MS (Biomechanics), and Arnaud Gouelle, PhD (Motor Control). Their combined clinical and research experience makes them uniquely qualified to guide their clients through all the steps necessary for a successful system implementation.

When it comes to fitness training, Chris Chapman has done a little bit of everything. He has trained gymnasts, freestyle skiers, basketball players, and most recently, athletes for the 2016 Rio Olympic Games. Now he works for the PUSH, a sport technology company that designs performance monitoring tools. He says that now that he has been through it all as a trainer, he is working to make the job of a strength coach easier.

“I’ve been in the training world for a decade, and it got to the point where I was I was doing a lot of teaching and educating giving back,” Chapman said Monday. “And it was at the point where I needed a new growth opportunity.”

That new opportunity came with PUSH and helping the company to develop its latest tool, Free Movement. Free Movement is an update for PUSH’s existing app that allows coaches to measure an athlete’s explosiveness — Chapman calls it “speed X strength” — using the wearable PUSH Band.

Convolutional neural network (CNN) models have achieved tremendous success in many visual detection and recognition tasks. Unfortunately, visual tracking, a fundamental computer vision problem, is not handled well using the existing CNN models, because most object trackers implemented with CNN do not effectively leverage temporal and contextual information among consecutive frames. Recurrent neural network (RNN) models, on the other hand, are often used to process text and voice data due to their ability to learn intrinsic representations of sequential and temporal data. Here, we propose a novel neural network tracking model that is capable of integrating information over time and tracking a selected target in video. It comprises three components: a CNN extracting best tracking features in each video frame, an RNN constructing video memory state, and a reinforcement learning (RL) agent making target location decisions. The tracking problem is formulated as a decision-making process, and our model can be trained with RL algorithms to learn good tracking policies that pay attention to continuous, inter-frame correlation and maximize tracking performance in the long run. We compare our model with an existing neural-network based tracking method and show that the proposed tracking approach works well in various scenarios by performing rigorous validation experiments on artificial video sequences with ground truth. To the best of our knowledge, our tracker is the first neural-network tracker that combines convolutional and recurrent networks with RL algorithms.

How a person tells a story could be interpreted in a multitude of ways — telling your friend about your awesome new car can come across as excitement or a brag, depending on the listener. To help detect the sentiment behind speech, a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology built a wearable app that can parse conversation to identify the emotion behind each part of the story.

The app, built into a fitness tracker for this research, collects physical and speech data to analyze the overall tone of the story in real time. Using artificial intelligence, the app can also figure out which part of the conversation was happy or sad, and tracks emotional changes in five-second intervals.

UNC-Chapel Hill’s plan to revamp its South Campus sports complex took another step forward this week, with trustees signaling support for moving the university’s field hockey team in a bit of musical chairs to help the soccer and football teams.

Advisory votes by the trustees’ finance committee backed proposals to demolish the field hockey team’s existing facility, Henry Stadium, and convert what’s now an intramural sports site, Ehringhaus Field, into the team’s new home.

The $14.2 million project is helping clear the way for the construction of a new soccer stadium close to South Road at what’s now Fetzer Field, and for the construction of another indoor practice building for the football team.

The present investigation was carried out to examine the incidence and pattern of injuries in adolescent multisport athletes from youth sports academy. Injury data were prospectively collected from 166 athletes during the seasons from 2009 to 2014. A total of 643 injuries were identified, 559 (87.0%) were time-loss injuries. The overall injury incidence was 5.5 (95% confidence interval CI: 5.1–6.0), the incidence of time-loss injuries was 4.8 (95% CI: 4.4–5.2), the incidence of growth conditions was 1.2 (95% CI: 1.0–1.4) and incidence of serious injuries was 0.6 (95% CI: 0.5–0.8) per 1000 h of exposure. The prevalence of overuse injuries was 50.3%. Growth conditions represented 20.0%. Most of the injuries (67.0%) involved the lower extremities, and both foot and ankle were the most predominant injured body parts (22.0%). Knee injuries were mostly from overuse (50 vs. 23, p = .02), whereas foot and ankle injuries resulted from an acute mechanism (94 vs. 31, p < .0001). Minor and moderate injuries accounted for 87.0%. Muscle, tendon and osteochondrosis injuries accounted for 52.0% of all injuries. Comparing groups, squash sport was having the highest injury incidence (8.5 injuries per athlete). Higher exposure was associated with greater overuse relative risk (RR = 1.03, 95% CI: 1.01–1.014, p < .001). In conclusion, the results of this study identified a high incidence of injuries in this youth sports population. Striking was the prevalence of overuse injuries of 50%, which suggests the need for injury prevention protocols for adolescent highly trained athletes.

… Why Did We Perform this Study

Quadriceps muscle weakness is common following anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury and ACL reconstruction. This muscle weakness often persists many years after someone has undergone knee surgery and returned to participation in physical activity. Quadriceps weakness often leads to greater disability in those with ACL reconstruction, and there is evidence that quadriceps dysfunction may negatively impact gait mechanics that can increase the risk of developing knee osteoarthritis. Therefore, it is critical for patients who have undergone ACL reconstruction to maximize quadriceps strength following surgery and maintain optimal quadriceps strength throughout their lifetime. Unfortunately, it remains unclear how much quadriceps strength is needed to function at a high level following ACL reconstruction. Furthermore, there are no established best practice guidelines for quantifying quadriceps strength in patients with an ACL reconstructions. Traditionally, many clinicians and researchers have compared quadriceps strength of the injured limb to that of the uninjured limb; thereby trying to maximize the strength symmetry between limbs after ACL injury. Conversely, we have previously reported that greater overall quadriceps strength, normalized to the body mass of the individual, is strongly associated with self-reported disability in those with an ACL reconstruction. Therefore, in this study, we wanted to determine the best method for using quadriceps strength to predict self-reported function following ACL reconstruction. We felt that this study would help us develop valuable clinical cuff-off scores that could be used to guide strengthening regimens for patients with an ACL reconstruction.

Background

Several studies have suggested that psychosocial variables can increase the risk of becoming injured during sport participation.
Objectives

The main objectives of these meta-analyses were to examine (i) the effect sizes of relationships between the psychosocial variables (suggested as injury predictors in the model of stress and athletic injury) and injury rates, and (ii) the effects of psychological interventions aimed at reducing injury occurrence (prevention).
Methods

Electronic databases as well as specific sport and exercise psychology journals were searched. The literature review resulted in 48 published studies containing 161 effect sizes for injury prediction and seven effect sizes for injury prevention.
Results

The results showed that stress responses (r = 0.27, 80 % CI [0.20, 0.33]) and history of stressors (r = 0.13, 80 % CI [0.11, 0.15]) had the strongest associations with injury rates. Also, the results from the path analysis showed that the stress response mediated the relationship between history of stressors and injury rates. For injury prevention studies, all studies included (N = 7) showed decreased injury rates in the treatment groups compared to control groups.
Conclusion

The results support the model’s suggestion that psychosocial variables, as well as psychologically, based interventions, can influence injury risk among athletes.

… [Juwan] Durham, one of five scholarship players injured in what has seems like a cursed basketball season in Storrs, heads to the tub. He and Steven Enoch, who has a more serious right foot injury, a stress reaction that could be the precursor to a fracture, are expected to make it back before the season is over. Not so for Alterique Gilbert, who dislocated his shoulder and tore the labrum on Nov. 17, Terry Larrier, who tore the ACL in his right knee on Nov. 21, or Mamadou Diarra, who has a chronic knee injury and will redshirt his freshman year. In December, Jalen Adams missed a week recovering from a concussion.

“When things like this happens, everybody says, ‘oh, it’s one of those years,”‘ [James] Doran said. “But we have not known a year like this. This isn’t ‘one of those years.'”

With so many injures, Doran has to divide his day into “appointments.”

As clubs are on standby to do medicals following transfer window closure at 11pm tonight and some medical staff will be at the Club until deadline is reached!

We look back at a great article written from Issue 10 of Football Medic & Scientist – What’s in a Medical, how to pass one and why some players don’t

Objectives: Hip control affects movement and muscle firing patterns in the leg, ankle and foot, and may contribute to overuse injuries. Muscle performance can be measured as strength, endurance or muscle activation patterns. Our objective was to systematically review whether hip muscle performance is associated with leg, ankle and foot injuries.

Data sources: A structured and comprehensive search of six medical literature databases was combined with forward and backward citation tracking (AMED, CINAHL, EMBASE, Medline, Scopus and SportDiscus).

Study selection: Eligible studies measured hip muscle performance in individuals with musculoskeletal injuries below the tibial tuberosity, using dynamometry or electromyography (EMG). All studies compared an injured group with a control group or compared the injured and non-injured limb in the same individual.

Data extraction: Data was extracted from each study independently by two authors.

Data synthesis: Twenty case-control and four prospective studies (n = 24) met the inclusion criteria. Injury classifications included chronic ankle instability (n = 18), Achilles tendinopathy (n = 2), medial tibial stress syndrome and tibial stress fracture (n = 1), posterior tibial tendon dysfunction (n = 1), and exertional medial tibial pain (n = 2). Eleven of the studies revealed differences in hip muscle performance indicating less strength, delayed onset activation and decreased duration of activation in the injured groups. Two studies found evidence for differences between groups only in some of their measurements. Three out of the four prospective studies revealed that hip muscle performance was not a risk factor for leg, ankle and foot injuries.

Conclusions: This review provides limited evidence that hip muscle performance variables are related to leg, ankle and foot injuries. Emerging evidence indicates this might be a result of the injury rather than a contributor to the injury.

The RBS Six Nations rugby tournament is almost upon us and this year will be the first time it has been contested under new rules governing the tackle zone. In short, referees will be able to use stronger sanctions in the shape of yellow and red cards to reduce reckless tackles that make contact with the head.

The rule changes are designed to help protect players from the short and long-term health consequences of concussion while building on the introduction of temporary substitutions to allow more comprehensive head injury assessment (HIA) during match play.

It is not just rugby that is taking the issue of concussion seriously; footballers who suffer a suspected head injury, such as that sustained by Ryan Mason, must be cleared to return to the field of play by a medical professional, not a member of the coaching team.

Meanwhile, a major initiative was launched last year to support players suffering from issues associated with mental health under the banner Support Within Sport. It is fair to say that when it comes to matters above the neck, players are incredibly well looked after in modern day sport. But what about injuries sustained to other body parts?

… The latest invention to “disrupt” the coffee world comes from Finnish startup Four Stigmatic, who have just released an instant coffee made with medicinal mushrooms.

By infusing a coffee mix with “medicinal” shrooms (no, not that kind) like chaga mushrooms and lion’s mane mushrooms, Four Stigmatic says it is able to offset any of the adverse effects of caffeine—including crashes and stomach acid burn. What’s more, it claims that their powdered mushroom-spiked sachets taste just like a smooth long black.

It’s a pretty good bet that NFL quarterbacks Tom Brady and Matt Ryan aren’t eating anything close to what you’re serving at your Super Bowl party for Sunday’s big game.

New England Patriots star Brady, 39, credits his well-publicized Spartan eating routine for keeping him at the top of his game at an age when most star quarterbacks are retired. His $200 cookbook of no-sugar, no-white flour, no-dairy recipes, the TB12 Nutrition Manual, sold out quickly online when it was released last May.

Ryan, of the Atlanta Falcons, isn’t quite as extreme with his diet. He’s said he favors clean eating but allows room for occasional treats.

… Every Thursday evening, this is the scene. The statistics and analytics meetings have been somewhat easy of late with the Imps rampaging to the top of the National League, but a 3-0 loss away at Barrow on Tuesday saw them lose momentum.

It means Danny can’t simply look forward to the visit of Brighton on Saturday – the reward for beating Ipswich in a third-round replay. The fixture marks the first time Lincoln have reached the fourth round of the FA Cup since Graham Taylor’s famous season as manager of the club in 1976.

Cowley rarely goes long without mentioning small margins or ways of squeezing every last drop out of his players. [commercial video autoplays]

For most people, control has some intrinsic value; people care about maintaining it and will pay something to do so. Whenever a private or public institution blocks choices or interferes with agency, some people will rebel, even if exercising control would not result in material benefits or might produce material harms. On the other hand, people sometimes want to relinquish control, because exercising agency is burdensome or costly. This essay explores when rational and boundedly rational people will prefer to maintain or exercise control and when they will prefer to delegate it.

… oday, the NCAA will host basketball analytics experts to discuss including more metrics in the tournament selection process — something the National Association of Basketball Coaches wisely requested. … “How can we make things better?” said [Kevin] Pauga, who also serves as assistant athletic director at Michigan State. “Let’s help get more information that the committee can look at, but look at it in an efficient way. Really, what can come out of this meeting is there are a lot of people that have all sorts of levels of understanding from all sorts of backgrounds and can provide knowledge (to decide) if a composite metric the way to go.”

… In many cases, analysts only have time to watch and analyse the last 3 matches of opposition on video. Using the passing networks gives them quick info in an easily digestible format that doesn’t cost them an extra 10-20 hours of video time.

Before we go any further though, I think it’s important to speak about the limitations of passing networks. These are a tool and meant to be part of an analytics suite to help you analyse games, but like any tool, you need to understand their weaknesses.

First, each node consists of the average location of a player’s touches. If they switch sides of the pitch regularly, their average will look central, even if they never touch the ball in that area.

Researching Tommy John surgery and its aftereffects is not an easy task. There are so many variables: the severity of the ligament tear, the health of the arm beforehand and the age of the pitcher it hangs off of, the skill of the doctor performing the procedure, the mutant healing factor of the elbow in question, the organizational philosophy toward rehab, the pitcher’s ability to pitch through pain or inability to disclose it, the small (yet burgeoning) sample size of those who’ve survived it. And luck.

There has always been a mystique surrounding the injury. Perhaps it’s the suddenness of it, a sort of anatomical act of terrorism with no warning, no justice. Or perhaps it’s the surgery itself, the sheer impossibility of it, as though it were thought up by Roald Dahl. (Find a spare tendon and tie it in place where the old one was. Why does the body even have spare tendons?) Or perhaps it’s just the unpredictability of what happens next. Pitchers generally struggle their first season returning, but occasionally a starter will simply take up dominance where he left off.

Clubs making wholesale changes are “cheating fans” out of an FA Cup run, according to BBC pundit Alan Shearer.

The 13 Premier League clubs in the fourth round made 98 changes to their line-ups, an average of 7.5 per team.

Championship sides facing lower-league opposition also rotated players, with Leeds making 10 changes, while Brighton and Newcastle made nine.

“Clubs care about money while fans care about trophies. That’s very unfortunate,” Shearer told BBC Sport.

The National Labor Relations Board just hit the NCAA with some alternative facts about that whole “student-athlete” thing.

While teenagers were agreeing to the “the worst contract in America” during the nationally-televised signing day spectacle on Tuesday, the NLRB’s General Counsel publicly published a memorandum declaring that college football players at private universities are actually employees of those schools.

The memorandum, authored by Barack Obama appointee, Richard F. Griffin, Jr., opined that “scholarship football players in Division I FBS private sector colleges and universities are employees under the [National Labor Relations Act], with the rights and protections of that Act.”

Griffin specifically outlined “Section 7” protections including the right to avoid retaliation if athletes self-organize a union; publicly advocate for player safety; and campaign to share in the profits derived from their on-field performances.

Each player in Sunday’s Super Bowl will have a computer chip attached to his shoulder pad that tracks his every movement, part of a two-year-old program that opens the league and its fans to a whole new world of statistical possibility.

Yet this initiative is so far under the radar that plenty of players still aren’t aware the league is tracking and measuring them like this. “I didn’t even know there was a chip in my shoulder pad,” said Falcons wide receiver Justin Hardy this week.


An even bigger mystery for league officials, coaches and dataheads is what to do with this new trove of information. The idea was that, by tracking the speed, location, and movement of players​, teams and fans could create metrics that would reveal who moved fastest in key situations, covered the most ground on defense or found the open areas in a zone defense most often.

But nearly everyone is still trying to discern how the information might add value to their understanding of a game that relies heavily on subjective decisions made through video analysis.

… So how does Michael Lewis recommend we short-circuit our own biases? He says we ought to choose people (whether employees, doctors, etc) who explicitly don’t look like what we’d expect — the idea being that for a person to get to a high level of success without the benefit of any “looking-the-part bonus points” they’re likely to actually be extremely qualified.

Lewis’ mechanism for reducing his own bias isn’t flawless, since it might lead him to dismiss the best candidate who also happens to look the part. But nonetheless I find his effort to mitigate the effects of his biases admirable.

It’s possible for whole industries to uncover baked-in biases and put mechanisms in place to reduce their effects. For example, professional symphonies now tend to hold “blind auditions” where candidates try out behind a screen so that the selection committee isn’t biased by appearance, gender, race, etc.