Alan Schwarz (born July 3, 1968) is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer and author, formerly at The New York Times, best known for writing more than 100 articles[1] that exposed the National Football League's cover-up of concussions and brought the issue of brain injuries in sports to worldwide attention.
Schwarz's work was profiled in The New Yorker[3] and several films, including the Will Smith movie "Concussion" and the documentaries "Head Games" [4] and PBS Frontline's "League of Denial".
[9] Schwarz's could compute square roots when he was 4 years old,[10] and he majored in mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania with the intention of becoming a high school math teacher.
"[12] Schwarz spent five months at The National Sports Daily before being hired in 1991 by Baseball America, where he was the senior writer until he joined the Times in March 2007.
Schwarz was one of the few people who recognized the importance of Nowinski's research and later told an interviewer: "No one thought his book was worth publishing (read: commercially viable).
He said, “Alan, I might have some big news on my hands, and you’re the only one who ever took me seriously.” Andre Waters, the former Philadelphia Eagles safety, had killed himself a few weeks before and Chris was having the brain tissue examined for Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, the disease to that point seen almost exclusively in boxers.
High-ranking league executive Jeff Pash said in Schwarz's story in the Times: "There are a great many people who have played football and other contact sports for many years and at high levels who do not appear to have suffered these types of deficits.
"[18] Schwarz later told the Columbia Journalism Review how he approached this type of pushback from the league and other doctors: If I didn’t know anything about neuroscience, I did know enough about Bayesian probability to know that something was different about this group of football players.
The point is how many of them are having the deficits, and how that compares to the general population.“He connected the dots in such a precise, linear way that it was undeniable what he had laid out,” Randall Lane, the editor of Forbes, said in a 2012 interview.
Congressman Anthony Weiner said during a pivotal hearing in October 2009, "I think the record should show beyond any work of any member of Congress ... we probably wouldn't even be here today if it were not for some of the stories that he has written.
ended its denials of the long-term risks of football: It revamped its rules regarding concussion management,[24] suspended its study of retired players' cognitive decline which Schwarz had exposed as improperly designed,[25] and accepted the resignations of the two co-chairmen of a league committee that had conducted questionable research.
[28] In 2010, a major investigative piece by Schwarz evidenced what were called glaring lapses in the safety standards for football helmets among players of all ages.
[32] Author and New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell, who wrote a 2009 profile [33] of football's dangers, has often said that Schwarz deserved most of the credit: "For the life of me I have no idea why he hasn’t won a Pulitzer ... It’s a symptom of some kind of broader social resistance to this message.
In June 2011 Schwarz moved to the Times's National Desk to focus on broader public-health issues such as child psychiatry and drug abuse.