Amateur boxers are to be banned from wearing headgear in a bid to reduce the number of head injuries.
While the move sounds counterintuitive, the theory is that opponents don't apply so much force if the head is unprotected.
The new rules, from the International Boxing Association (AIBA), state that from June 1st, amateur, elite male boxers who compete internationally will be banned from wearing headgear, like their professional counterparts. Another reason for the move is that headgear can obscure peripheral vision, making it harder to see when a blow is being aimed at the side of the head. Indeed, research has shown that a lack of headgear actually reduces the risk of concussion.
While drivers take more risks around helmeted cyclists, drivers aren't really trying to knock out cyclists. If you're minimising expected harm to others subject to your own cost constraints, optimum abatement goes down with the other party's mitigating efforts because expected harm drops.
But I can imagine scenarios where optimal punch force either increases or decreases in the presence of helmets. If you need to apply more force to get any effect in the presence of helmets, then optimal force would be lower without helmets if exerting force is costly in terms of exhaustion. But it's also pretty plausible that it's much harder to knock out a helmeted opponent than an unhelmeted one; if a connected hit at maximal force is sufficiently unlikely to knock out a helmeted opponent relative to an unhelmeted one, then there could be a substantive change to the returns to strenuous force. Whether optimal punch force goes up or down then isn't obvious to me (though it likely would be to somebody who has boxed).
A Peltzman story on the defence side would require that helmeted boxers take less care to avoid hits to the padded areas than to the unpadded chin, and that cumulative hits to the padded parts cause longer-term damage. And, that isn't inconsistent with some of the commentary from trainers at the time of the ban:
A year's gone by, so that should be plenty of time for a diff-in-diff study: headgear continued to be worn for women, senior and youth divisions; it was only banned for elite males during advancing tournaments, according to the story above-linked. But whether any reduction in concussions were due to Peltzman effects or due to better defensive peripheral vision in the absence of helmets ... I can't see how that could be disentangled. Well, if they brought back blindfold boxing and and checked the magnitude of helmet effects there as compared to ... no that wouldn't work either as helmets could arguably also muffle sound.
- “I’m not for it at all. I like the protective gear. Without it, everyone’s going to have to be much more vigilant, that’s for sure.” — Dr. Sonny Arkangel, S.A. ringside physician
- “It’s going to change the way we train kids now. There was a comfort zone with headgear. Without it, your defense is going to have to be better.” — Joe Rodriguez, local trainer
Update: the Economics Department's pugilist, Steve Agnew, reports (via Paul Walker):
The second explanation from the trainers about boxers blocking with their headgear is right. The not wanting to hurt your opponent explanation is bollocks, as is the chance of knockout v strenuous punching argument.
The biggest pain in the arse with headgear is the heat. The headgear prevents a reasonable amount of your body’s heat escaping through your head. It is much more tiring to fight with headgear than without. That’s why in most gyms, fighters don’t spar with headgear.The biggest pain in the arse with headgear is the heat. The headgear prevents a reasonable amount of your body’s heat escaping through your head. It is much more tiring to fight with headgear than without. That’s why in most gyms, fighters don’t spar with headgear.
My (limited) understanding of amateur boxing is that most of the time competitors aren't actually trying to knock each other out.
ReplyDelete1) Points are scored for hits, rather than for 'rounds won' (as in professional boxing). A soft 'tap' scores as many points as a hard hit.
2) Bouts are much shorter (in terms of the maximum) than in professional boxing, meaning that knockouts are probably less likely and a strategy that focused on knocking out your opponent (fewer but harder punches?) might not be optimal.
Amateur boxers may be more like drivers/cyclists in this respect than like professionals.
I think you are being a bit too dramatic. Ebola while being-brown trousers-causing scary is not as infectious as say Swine Flu. The outbreak occurred in February. Five to six months later, it has infected 1200 people (and killed over half - like Anthrax, early treatment is a lifesaver). That's rather slow and the governments in the area aren't exactly known for their competence.
ReplyDeleteEbola has reached the cities before. For example in 1995, Ebola reached Kikwit in the Congo (almost 400,000 people) and killed 245. The Congo then was under the rule of Mobuto who had better things to do in life than look after the health of his people.
And plenty of nasty diseases do appear in first world countries: (Malaria, Dengue Fever, AIDS, Hantavirus) for which there is no effective vaccine.
I’m from South-Africa, I was having Ebola virus disease, Dr. Kpelede cured me from Ebola virus disease, so I will advise you people that have it too, to contact him now, so that you will be cured by him okay.. Contact him via his email on kpeledesolutiontemple@gmail.com or +2347038111854
ReplyDeleteI’m from South-Africa, I was having Ebola virus disease, Dr. Kpelede cured me from Ebola virus disease, so I will advise you people that have it too, to contact him now, so that you will be cured by him okay.. Contact him via his email on kpeledesolutiontemple@gmail.com or +2347038111854.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Peter. In terms of foreign aid priorities, the viral hemorrhagic fevers are well behind malaria, trypanosomiasis, HIV, infant diarrhoeal diseases, and drug-resistant TB. Probably even behind polio eradication.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of threats to People Like Us, nothing even comes close to influenza, followed at some distance by things like drug-resistant streptococci, XDR-TB, the emerging coronaviruses (SARS and MERS and whatever's next), and then probably things like chikungunya and the various hardy mosquito-borne encephalitis viruses before you get to the filoviruses.
Ebola is too rapidly debilitating and not contagious enough to make a good pandemic in countries with efficient public health systems. Conditional on getting close to a case it's scary, but marginally there are many worse things out there.
PS: Al-Jazeera on Twitter is a good source of international news links. I don't know how reliable their content is, but as a source of topics to worry about they seem pretty good.
I didn't say we shouldn't have prizes for those too! The nice thing about a prize is that you don't have to pay anything unless somebody actually solves the problem. For diseases where the problem is, in part, worries that there's zero cash at the end of the research, this solves that problem. I expect we do better in using prizes rather than patents for drugs for rare third world diseases and for new antibiotics.
ReplyDeleteThanks Peter and Thomas,
ReplyDeleteAll fantastic information. On the subject of antibiotic resistant strains of TB for example, do you see science turning toward phage therapy? I stumbled upon a doco based in Russia where all sorts of apparent cures were being, created by elderly Russian ladies and stored in a run-down building in rattling, old fridges. I am aware that right now in Australia there sits a young woman, from New Guinea, in an isolated hospital room. She has antibiotic resistant TB. A superbug nighmare for her. An amazingly close call for all of Australia. What if she had escaped the net? Most australians are blissfully unaware...
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