That's the study I talked about. even in the study it reduced force the most in mid power shots. For weak and strong punches it made less of a difference. As I said that is still a positive. But then you have the negative aspects that got talked about in this thread which are a factor as well. Also i wonder how realistic the study was anyway. Does the average punch fall into the high power shot category or the mid power category where headgear helps the most?
Also was the force measured inside the "skull" or was the superficial impact on the dummy measured.?
Granted I will just believe that the scienitists who amde this study now better and that it really resembles a head getting hit by a punch. Then you still have the other points being made against it.
There are studies about it concerning the NFL and their helmets. There are many more than this one about boxing because the NFL always tries to introduce better helmets. I also would suspect that these studies are a bit more thorough.
Even the most modern NFL helmets don't reduce more than 50% of the power (from what i remembered much less) from an impact. granted it is full on hits by 300lbs guys but still.
Also no helmets even for these mid power shots where they achieve the best results rotational forces aren't reduced and cant be reduced as in it#s literally impossible since the helmets are supposed to are firmly connected to the head. Rotational forces are the worst for the brain.
In the end it may or may not make a small difference but more liekly than not it is a small difference only.
Headgear even if it should work should never ever be seen as a way to protect the brain because even if it does it likely makes only a very small difference and that midnset is dangerous.
I remember the study how in the NFL people died much more often pre headgear. But that was because of acute injuries not CTE. Obviously there was CTE back then and it also exists today in Rugby but with how much CTE is in the news in the NFL you'd think that rugby players would all be mass murderers and that 100% of them go co mpletely insane by age 25.
Same about pre headgear NFl or even the early NFl with leather helmets which couldn't possibly reduce a lot of the force even if players were smaller back then.
If the NFL wasn't trying to cash out in the short term and invested the energy and money they invest in new helmets and superficial stuff like that in serious CTE research (or if they had started earlier like when they first suspected that brain trauma is an issue) then maybe we would be able to help a lot of athletes with CTE.
People have known for 100 years that stuff like this happens in boxing. But boxing hasn't been mainstream in a long time, it's decentralized and people are in shock now that running headfirst into each other isn't healthy unlike the big bad sport of boxing so it's only now getting the attention.