The Inverted W Does Not Cause Autism

By The Common Man

"What number does it have to be ... for people just to start listening to what [Dr. Mike Marshall has] been saying for years ... I told my [orthopedist] something happened ... after [he threw that fateful pitch] ?... Boom — the [lightning] was gone from his [arm]." Later, when [Dr. James Andrews] read a comment from the CDC stating that the vast majority of the science to date did not support [this] assertion, [random Mike Marshall supporter] replied, "My science is [Strasburg]. He's at home. That's my science."

-- A reappropriated quote from Jenny McCarthy's profile in Time Magazine.

For years, parents of autistic children clung to a study conducted by Dr. Andrew Wakefield, a British surgeon and researcher who supposedly made a connection between the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine and autism in children. It helped them cope with their children’s illness, and gave them an external body to blame for the disease that altered their lives and inhibited their child’s ability to develop at a “normal” rate. It’s hard to blame these parents for looking for answers, when science simply cannot fully explain what happens in the human brain.

Wakefield, whose research was never replicated successfully, was ultimately discredited, and the journal that published his study retracted its claims. That said, the movement his work spawned still has significant life, through the high-profile support of celebrities like Robert Kennedy Jr., Jenny McCarthy, and Jim Carrey. Their activism has led to articles and profiles in Time and on CNN, Kennedy went on The Daily Show to talk about it, and McCarthy had an entire hour on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Similarly, whenever a hot young prospect gets hurt, the disciples of Dr. Mike Marshall, former NL Cy Young award winner and PhD in Kinesiology, trot out “the inverted W”, a position a pitcher’s body makes when he raises his pitching elbow above his shoulder.

Dr. Marshall believes that this causes undue strain on the shoulder and elbow because, as the pitcher lands with his front foot, the arm is dragging behind the rest of the body. In the pitcher’s effort to “catch up,” he generates additional torque on those joints which can lead to the kinds of catastrophic injuries that ruined Mark Prior and have shelved Stephen Strasburg. Marshall claims to “know the injurious flaws in the 'traditional' baseball pitching motion that injures baseball pitchers and how to eliminate all pitching injuries. I also know the mechanical flaws in the 'traditional' baseball pitching motion that decrease release velocity, release consistency and the variety and quality of pitches pitchers can throw and how to correct these mechanical flaws.”

Marshall’s apostles jump into the message boards, and consistently call for him and his ideas to “get a fair hearing.” The reality is that Marshall has had 30 years to “get a fair hearing,” and hasn’t caught on. Indeed, there’s hardly a single Major League player who has used Marshall’s tutelage.

Marshall’s proponents will argue that it’s his attitude, arrogance, and rebelliousness that have made him, and the young men he works with, persona non grata in Major and minor league ball. But Major League Baseball has never had trouble adding crackpots who can play the game or teach others better ways to play. Teams don’t mind dealing with crackpots like Ozzie Guillen, Albert Belle, Barry Bonds, and Brett Meyers when they are producing, after all. Tony LaRussa is about as nonconformist as you can get, and is arrogant and obnoxious as anyone in the league has ever been. Milton Bradley, Mike Sweeney, A-Rod, Sammy Sosa, Roger Clemens, Jose Canseco. Their antics tolerated because they produced.

Teams are going to Germany, Australia, China, Italy, and even India in an attempt to find prospects. You’re going to tell The Common Man that they’re not willing to look at a bunch of pitchers training in Florida because they don’t like the guy training them? In a multi-billion dollar industry? Run by smart people like Theo Epstein, Alex A, Jack Z, Jon Daniels, and Andrew Friedman who make their living by exploiting market inefficiencies? It’s ludicrous conspiracy theorizing on the order of “vaccines cause autism” and “Bush and Cheney blew up the World Trade Center.”

The reality, according to comparison studies done of Marshall’s method and a more traditional motion is, as summarized by Will Carroll, “Marshall's motion as tested simply does not work. …To summarize, Marshall's motion gets less velocity out of more force, meaning it is less efficient.” Indeed, according to the American Sports Medicine Institute, Marshall’s method generates the same torque on arms and shoulders, and also leads to a decrease in accuracy. An analysis by JZZ Technologies Inc. suggests that Marshall’s pitchers are at increased risk for back, anterior shoulder, and neck injuries, similar to the ones that plagued Marshall from 1976-1977.

It’s tempting to try and find reasons why players get injured. To do so helps us to feel powerful, in control of our destinies and those of youngsters like Stephen Strasburg. And acquiring knowledge that others supposedly don’t have is also alluring, in that it allows us to claim a special status. We are on the forefront of a new movement. We saw what others did not. We were his Apostles spreading the word. We saw The Beatles when they were still a garage band in Liverpool.

Like Andrew Wakefield, Mike Marshall is a lone voice in the wilderness who has attracted followers that don’t have the medical training or background in exercise physiology to fully dissect and understand his claims. “We don’t exactly know yet” how the brain works or what combination of factors leads to each injury is not an acceptable answer, even if it’s the best one we’ve got now. What Marshall says sounds plausible and tantalizing, even if he’s not correct. And so he continues to churn out a vocal and devoted following who will beat his drum and toot his horn in the face of evidence to the contrary. In the face of science. Their science is that young men get injured. And dammit, they want answers and solutions, and the simpler the better.