Chronic traumatic encephalopathy may simply be an inert, non-toxic, non-propagating deposition of tau.

Few principles are as essential to the education of developing scientists as the role of the null hypothesis in inferential statistics and research in general. This is often taught as directly analogous to the principle of being considered innocent in a court of law until proven guilty. In at least some cases, the consequences of ignoring this scientific principle and embracing an alternate hypothesis without sufficient proof can be substantial, and equivalent to a premature assumption of guilt. Consider, for example, the hypothesis that vaccinations cause autism, or that cooking with aluminium pans causes Alzheimer’s disease (AD). These are both alternative hypotheses that eventuated (and in the former example, continue to eventuate) in widespread public alarm. In both cases, …