Shannon AL, Ferrari R, Russell AS.
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Alberta rodeo athletes do not develop the chronic whiplash syndrome.J Rheumatol. 2006 May;33(5):975-7. PMID: 16652428 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

We have gotten several e-mails about this article and have spoken to several of our Canadian brethren at the IWTC about this publication. As a result, we have chosen to reprint here our formal rebuttal.

Shannon et al claimed that Rodeo riders have little if any sequelae of whiplash, and the people in the audience had more complaints from whiplash, hence whiplash must be a biopsychosocial phenomenon.

For a link to Pubmed for these citations, click here...


Centeno C, Freeman MD.
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Alberta rodeo riders do not develop late whiplash.J Rheumatol. 2007 Feb;34(2):451-2; author reply 452. No abstract available. PMID: 17304671 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

We were quite surprised to see that Shannon et al’s paper regarding the comparative rates of chronic whiplash in Alberta rodeo athletes versus members of the rodeo audience merited publication in the Archives of Rheumatology[1]. Despite these authors’ claim that “we have no reason to believe that the distribution of such injuries should be strikingly different in these 2 groups” we would have surmised that the peer-reviewers of this paper would have found the reason that escaped Shannon et al. and yet would be readily apparent to most lay readers of the study. We find the authors’ conclusions just as publication-worthy as those of a study of the average height of NBA basketball players versus the members of the audience, with the conclusion that the difference of more than a foot in height is best explained by the theory that the audience must be lacking in nutrition. In a similar vein, Shannon et al explained the difference in symptom duration between rodeo athletes and audience members as the result of a specious biopsychosocial theory that sidesteps the enormous amount of literature indicating an organic etiology of most chronic whiplash symptoms, instead blaming the chronic symptoms on an irrational fear of whiplash injury in the patient..[2-10]
In arriving at their biopsychosocial model explanation for their findings, Shannon et al managed to overlook the fact that rodeo athletes are self-selected ultra-hardy members of the population, located at the furthest right extreme of the injury susceptibility bell curve. While few lay people are aware of the definitions of the epidemiologic terms “bias” and “confounding,” most are aware of the intuitive concept that professional athletes should not be compared to non-professional athletes for the characteristics that make them most likely to become professional athletes; physical prowess. It is rather surprising that the reviewers who green-lighted this paper for the Archives were not more attentive. In our opinion, this paper should not have been published in its current form.




1. Shannon, A.L., R. Ferrari, and A.S. Russell, Alberta rodeo athletes do not develop the chronic whiplash syndrome. J Rheumatol, 2006. 33(5): p. 975-7.
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8. Sterling, M., et al., Sensory hypersensitivity occurs soon after whiplash injury and is associated with poor recovery. Pain, 2003. 104(3): p. 509-17.
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10. Wallis, B.J., S.M. Lord, and N. Bogduk, Resolution of psychological distress of whiplash patients following treatment by radiofrequency neurotomy: a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. Pain, 1997. 73(1): p. 15-22.