An injured NFL team, a power substation and a theory that won’t fade – A viral online theory for the San Francisco 49ers’ injuries is disputed by scientists but has some players’ attention.
…But not all scientists are so dismissive. Paul Héroux, a professor in McGill University’s Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health, described “an ongoing bloody battle” between those who view EMF as harmless and those calling for more research.
Cowan’s assessment is theoretically plausible, Héroux said. But the only studies on the effects of EMF on the collagen that make up soft tissue involved much stronger electromagnetic fields. When it came to the lower frequency levels emitted from electrical stations, “you would expect there would be lots studies,” he said. “But practically all of these studies focus on cancer.”
Kromhout, the professor who researched workers exposed to EMF, said “if you have indications that something is going on, it wouldn’t hurt to study that.”
De Vocht, the epidemiology professor, said he probably couldn’t get a grant approved to do such a study because “there are too many steps missing in between” that would need to be proved before he could reasonably hypothesize that the substation was causing all the injuries.
Cowan, less concerned with those missing steps, fired off a series of posts on Substack arguing that “extremely low-frequency” (ELF) electromagnetic fields were damaging the player’s soft tissue, making their muscles and tendons more susceptible to serious injury. His hypothesis “fits like a glove,” he wrote, “… and [the injury pattern] matches the exact biological disruptions documented in peer-reviewed research.”
In an interview, Cowan acknowledged he hadn’t seen any research specifically on EMF damage to muscles and tendons; he drew connections from other studies and his own observations as a clinician, he said. He also didn’t know the 49ers started practicing in Santa Clara so long ago. If he had, he would have broadened his research to track the rising number of cell towers in the area. He said he remains “confident” the substation contributed to the injuries.
After Cowan published his series in the first week of January, his work went viral, spreading across X, TikTok, podcasts and group chats — including a few with NFL players in them.
The Post corresponded with about two dozen NFL agents, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity, fearful of hurting future contract negotiations.
Roughly one-third of the agents said they had heard from clients about the theory. Several said players had real concerns about EMF, and a couple speculated the popularity of the theory could affect the 49ers’ ability to attract or retain free agents this offseason.
While mainstream epidemiology requires rigorous, step-by-step proof (which is currently missing), the perception of risk is already affecting the 49ers’ reputation and potentially their roster management. For the players, the risk of a career-ending Achilles tear outweighs the need for a peer-reviewed study.
Low-frequency electromagnetic fields can degrade collagen, weaken tendons, and cause soft-tissue damage at levels regulators call "safe."
We have a real world case study proving this:
An NFL team whose practice facility sits next to a massive electrical substation.
THREAD 🧵… pic.twitter.com/fOVvrVTu5I
— Peter Cowan | Sunlight is Life (@living_energy) January 6, 2026
Stephen Turner’s 2014 essay, “The blogosphere and its enemies: the case of oophorectomy,” explores the tension between traditional expert authority and the decentralized “wild” speech of the internet. Using the medical controversy surrounding ovary removal (oophorectomy) as a primary case study, Turner argues that the blogosphere, rather than being a “dictatorship of idiots,” serves as a vital corrective to the cognitive biases and self-interests of professional experts.
Turner frames the debate by contrasting two different views of public discourse:
Critics like Andrew Keen and Jürgen Habermas argue that uncontrolled discussion leads to “intellectual anarchy”. They believe experts and professional journalists should act as “filters” to protect the public from misinformation. Turner argues that blogs provide a platform for “technical knowledge” and personal experiences that are often difficult to access through official channels. He describes this as a “folk sociology of knowledge”—where laypeople analyze the motives and interests of participants, effectively detecting bias in “expert” claims.
Turner uses the medical field to illustrate how experts can be wrong despite their reliance on “scientific” trials.
Many surgeons claimed that oophorectomy had negligible effects on a woman’s sexuality and general health, provided hormone replacement therapy (HRT) was used. They dismissed patient complaints as “psychological” or a natural part of aging.
Organizations like the HERS Foundation and blogs like HysterSisters provided a space for thousands of women to report severe negative outcomes—such as loss of libido, chronic pain, and suicidal feelings—that were not being captured in short-term medical studies.
Later meta-analyses and long-term research eventually affirmed the bloggers’ claims, revealing that the surgery increased risks of premature death, cardiovascular disease, and cognitive impairment.
The essay introduces several sociological concepts to explain why the blogosphere succeeds where experts fail:
Professional groups (like doctors or academics) are under the “discipline of that group,” which often forces them to conform to a consensus that may ignore anomalous data.
Experts often rely on “collectively organized heuristics” (like randomized trials) that have their own inherent biases, such as being too short in duration to catch long-term harm.
Turner views blog commentary as a “Habermasian challenge” for experts to justify their claims against lived reality.
Turner concludes that the blogosphere is not a threat to truth but a source of moderation. By removing institutional pressures to conform, it allows for a more diverse aggregation of information. While not always right, the blogosphere provides a “potential corrective to expert error” by forcing open discussion on the interests and biases of everyone involved—experts included.
Stephen Turner’s “folk sociology of knowledge” provides a specific framework for understanding why NFL players and the public are gravitating toward the EMF (electromagnetic field) injury theory despite overwhelming dismissal from scientific experts.
Turner’s thesis is that the blogosphere (or social media in the modern context) allows laypeople to perform their own sociology by analyzing the motives, interests, and cognitive biases of professional authorities.
He argues that expertise in a democracy relies on “cognitive authority”—the public’s willingness to defer to a group’s specialized knowledge.
Radiation oncology and radiology professors state there is “no firmly established evidence” or even a plausible biological mechanism for low-frequency EMF to cause physical injury like tendon ruptures. They categorize the theory as “baseless” and a “conspiracy”.
Players like Jon Feliciano and George Kittle, along with agents, observe a persistent anomaly: the 49ers consistently rank as one of the most injured teams in the NFL. Through Turner’s lens, the players are rejecting the experts’ “blanket assertions” because those assertions fail to explain their lived reality of recurring injuries.
A core part of Turner’s “folk sociology” is the detection of status closure—the idea that experts protect the interests of their own professional or institutional group.
In the oophorectomy case, bloggers identified that surgeons were financially incentivized to perform operations.
In the NFL context, players and agents perform a similar “sociology of motives”: they might suspect the league or team doctors are downplaying environmental risks because admitting the facility is unsafe would be a massive logistical and financial catastrophe. This suspicion undermines the “neutrality” that experts claim to have.
Turner describes the creation of “commissions from below”—groups that aggregate data outside official channels to challenge expert error.
Peter Cowan’s Substack and viral threads on X act as these counter-expert platforms. By gathering maps, injury statistics, and local gaussmeter readings, these platforms provide “different information” and use “different collective heuristics” to process it.
Agents like Trey Robinson buying gaussmeters to “take whatever steps we can” is a direct example of Turner’s idea that laypeople will seek their own technical knowledge when they feel “the authority of experts” is failing to protect them.
Turner notes that experts are often blinded by their own heuristics, such as relying only on short-term randomized trials that might miss long-term “biological disruptions”.
While mainstream scientists dismiss the EMF theory because it isn’t documented in standard literature, some experts, like Paul Héroux, admit there is a “bloody battle” and that almost all existing studies focus on cancer rather than soft tissue, leaving a massive research gap.
Turner argues that unsanitized discussion provides “personal experience that conflicts with… blanket assertions made by experts”. For an NFL player, the “natural experiment” of being an injury outlier for a decade carries more weight than laboratory data that doesn’t reflect their specific high-intensity environment.
Turner defines status closure as the tendency of professional groups to protect their authority and reputation by dismissing outside information that they haven’t “filtered”.
In the NFL, team doctors and league scientists act as the “authoritative class”. They dismiss the EMF theory as a “conspiracy” because it hasn’t passed through the “explicit social controls” of peer-reviewed journals.
Through a “folk sociology of knowledge,” players analyze the motives of these experts. They might suspect that the team’s medical staff is biased by the $17 billion “goldmine” of the industry—similar to how Turner’s bloggers suspected surgeons of pushing hysterectomies for profit.
Turner argues that the blogosphere thrives when there is a gap between “blanket assertions made by experts” and the “personal experience” of laypeople.
Turner notes that experts often fail to see long-term effects because they don’t observe them clinically or because their studies are too short. Scientist Frank de Vocht admits he couldn’t even get a grant to study this because “too many steps” are missing in the theory.
NFL players, like the women in the oophorectomy case, are using their own bodies as the primary evidence. If they observe that recovery takes longer at a specific facility, they value that “testimony from actual personal experiences” over a scientist’s claim that a substation is “theoretically” harmless.
Turner describes the HERS Foundation as a “commission from below”—a counter-expertise organization that aggregates data that experts ignore.
Tom Cowan’s viral posts act as this counter-expert platform. Even though he hasn’t seen direct research on EMF and tendons, he “draws connections from other studies” to provide a narrative that “fits like a glove” for the players’ injuries.
When agent Trey Robinson buys a $39.98 gaussmeter, he is participating in what Turner calls a “Habermasian challenge”. He is refusing to stay “in the dark” and is attempting to verify the environment himself because he no longer trusts the “official representatives.”
Ultimately, Turner concludes that rejecting “unsanitized discussion” in the blogosphere is to “reject a potential corrective to expert error”. While critics fear “intellectual anarchy,” the players’ group chats and viral threads are actually a way of “testing, questioning, and moderating” opinion.
Just as Turner shows that “official announcements are being tailored” to blogosphere responses, the 49ers’ front office may be forced to address these “conspiracy theories” not because they believe the science, but because the perception of risk is affecting their ability to sign free agents.
Turner notes that experts derive their authority from being “under the discipline” of their professional group. However, when that expert discipline fails to explain a persistent problem—like the 49ers’ recurring soft tissue injuries—a “validity gap” opens up.
Mainstream epidemiologists say the substation is harmless because there is no peer-reviewed mechanism for injury at that frequency. Players and agents observe that “guys would take longer to heal” in that specific location. They use their own “technical knowledge of normal procedures” (the rhythm of recovery) to conclude the experts are missing something.
Turner points out that blog commentary is particularly good at “detecting bias”. In the oophorectomy case, patients identified that physicians were financially incentivized to perform surgeries, calling hysterectomy the “goldmine of gynecology”.
In the NFL context, players might perform a similar analysis: Are the team doctors and the league downplaying EMF risks because moving a multi-billion dollar practice facility is a logistical nightmare?
This creates a suspicion of status closure, where the “expert class” protects the status quo (the facility and its location) rather than the individual player’s health.
Turner argues that experts rely on “collectively organized heuristics” (like short-term randomized trials) that often fail to catch long-term or complex issues.
The Players’ Heuristic: Like the women on HysterSisters who filled in expert gaps with personal experience, NFL players are using their own bodies as the primary data points.
As Turner notes, the blogosphere provides “personal experience that conflicts with, specifies in detail, or balances the blanket assertions made by experts”. For a player whose career depends on a single tendon, a “theoretically plausible” theory from a “counter-expert” like Cowan is more valuable than a “blanket assertion” from a scientist who has never played in the NFL.
While critics like Andrew Keen fear a “dictatorship of idiots” , Turner sees the blogosphere as a “large schoolhouse” where opinion is tested.
By using gaussmeters and sharing findings in group chats, players are attempting to “eliminate something being an issue” through their own data collection.
They are creating a “commission from below”—a counter-expertise organization—to challenge the “monopoly of knowledge” held by the team’s medical staff.
In both stories, there is a “bloody battle” between what experts claim the data shows and what individuals actually experience.
The 49ers Case: Scientists like Frank de Vocht argue there are “missing steps” and a lack of peer-reviewed research connecting low-frequency EMF to specific muscle injuries. Proponent Tom Cowan relies on his own “observations as a clinician” and connecting dots from unrelated studies.
The Turner Essay: Prominent gynecologists claim that randomized scientific trials show hysterectomy and oophorectomy actually lead to better general health and sexuality. However, blog commenters provide “testimony from actual personal experiences” that starkly contradicts these official claims, reporting loss of libido and chronic pain.
Both situations feature a central figure or organization that gathers “wild” or unorganized information to challenge the establishment.
The 49ers Case: Tom Cowan uses his Substack to host a “series of posts” that went viral, providing a centralized platform for the theory.
The Turner Essay: The HERS Foundation acts as a “counter-expertise organization”. It has collected data since 1991—long before medical literature systematically researched the topic—and provides a forum for individual reports that experts dismissed.
In both cases, representatives of authority view the spread of these theories as “intellectual anarchy” or the work of “idiots”.
The 49ers Case: Critics and some agents dismiss the EMF concerns as “conspiracy theories” and argue that players are simply susceptible to misinformation.
The Turner Essay: Critics like Andrew Keen and Jürgen Habermas argue that the blogosphere lacks professional filters and allows “false and misleading attacks on experts”. They fear consumers are unable to sort through falsehoods to find “genuine expert knowledge”.
My father hated being under or near power lines and electro magnetic fields. When I revered dad, I think I bought in, but after I went to UCLA in 1988, I switched from thinking my dad was a great man to thinking her was a nutter.
Turner argues that professional experts (like utility engineers or state health officials) are “under the discipline” of their group, which can make them resistant to information that threatens their status or industry.
The “Crank” Perspective: Your father may have sensed that the experts were not “neutral” but were protecting a multi-billion dollar infrastructure.
Turner’s View: Bloggers and “cranks” are often effective at detecting this status closure—the way professional classes ignore data that doesn’t fit their established models.
Experts rely on “collectively organized heuristics,” such as standardized safety trials, which Turner notes can have their own “cognitive biases”.
If someone lives near a power line and notices a pattern—whether it’s headaches, difficulty sleeping, or observing a “cluster” of illness in the neighborhood—they are using a different heuristic than the expert.
Turner suggests that these “wild” observations serve as a corrective to expert error. He cites medical cases where experts were proven wrong by the very people they initially dismissed as “idiots”.
A major point in the Turner essay is that experts often fail because they don’t observe effects long-term or “clinically”.
In the oophorectomy case, doctors used short-term trials to claim the surgery was harmless, while patients on blogs reported devastating long-term impacts.
Similarly, in the 49ers story, scientists admit they haven’t seen research specifically on EMF damage to muscles and tendons, yet they remain dismissive because the “missing steps” haven’t been proven in a lab.
Turner defines organizations like the HERS Foundation as “commissions from below”. These groups gather “unsanitized” information to challenge the monopoly on truth held by experts.
Your father’s views align with this “commission from below” mindset—refusing to accept a “dictatorship of experts” and instead relying on a different set of collective heuristics to process reality.
Let’s imagine that Peter Cowan’s view is eventually vindicated. What would be the repercussions, particularly for the experts who dismissed him?
If Peter Cowan’s theory regarding Extremely Low-Frequency (ELF) electromagnetic fields and soft tissue injury were eventually vindicated, the repercussions for the experts who dismissed him would likely follow a pattern seen in major scientific paradigm shifts.
Based on the sociological and historical frameworks provided in the context, here are the potential consequences:
Experts who labeled the theory a “conspiracy” or “baseless” would face significant public and professional scrutiny.
In cases where official reports are later found to be incomplete or incorrect, the authors’ reputations are often “seriously tarnished” in the eyes of the public.
Once a dismissed theory is proven right, the experts lose their “cognitive authority”—the public’s willingness to defer to their specialized knowledge.
Experts could be accused of “historical negationism” if it appeared they deliberately suppressed data to maintain an “ideological identity” or preserve institutional bonds.
The vindication of a marginalized voice often triggers a broader “crisis of trust” in the institutions the experts represented.
When a specific group (like NFL players) perceives that authorities were biased, they may “generalize from specific interactions to a mental representation of the institution as an abstract entity,” leading to a permanent loss of trust.
The current scientific system often allows scientists to receive credit for successes while shielding them from personal responsibility for errors. A massive failure of this scale could force a shift toward “personal accountability” in academic and clinical error correction.
According to Thomas Kuhn’s theory of paradigm shifts, the discovery of “recalcitrant anomalies” (like persistent injuries) eventually leads to a scientific revolution.
During a crisis, the “conservative structures” that normally dismiss outside voices relax, allowing “truly innovative ideas” to emerge as serious alternatives.
The vindication would validate the “folk sociology of knowledge”—the idea that laypeople using their own observations (like “guys take longer to heal here”) are a necessary corrective to expert error.
If the experts’ dismissal was seen as preventing necessary safety measures, the repercussions could extend into the legal sphere.
Experts and institutions could face lawsuits for failing to act on “theoretically plausible” risks, especially if those risks were dismissed without thorough investigation.
In legal terms, the “vindication” itself can be a form of remedy, potentially leading to nominal or punitive damages if the dismissal was found to be a violation of the “duty of care”.
If Peter Cowan’s theory were eventually vindicated, the repercussions for the experts who dismissed him would be substantial, moving from a loss of professional “cognitive authority” to potential legal and institutional accountability.
Experts derive their power from cognitive authority—the public’s trust in their specialized knowledge.
Once a dismissed theory is proven right, the “expert class” loses its status as the sole source of truth. This often triggers a shift where the public prefers “wild” speech and personal testimony over official expert filters.
The dismissal would be reframed not as a scientific judgment, but as status closure—a defensive move to protect the professional group’s reputation and financial interests.
In modern science and law, the “gatekeeping” role of experts carries a duty of care.
Historically, experts who mocked eventually-proven breakthroughs (like Ignaz Semmelweis’s germ theory) are remembered as obstacles to progress rather than protectors of science.
Recent cases show that when scientific experts misrepresent data or ignore evidence, it can lead to massive financial settlements—such as the $15 million settlement involving the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute for misrepresented data.
In the legal system, “serious consequences” and disciplinary measures can be taken against professionals who engage in misconduct or ignore warnings that their views are “groundless”.
If vindicated, Cowan’s theory would force a Kuhnian revolution in the field. The methods players are currently using—like buying consumer-grade gaussmeters—would be vindicated as a necessary “commission from below” that caught what experts missed. Science would be forced to adopt new “collective heuristics” that weigh long-term clinical observation as heavily as short-term randomized trials.
If it were proven that the substation was indeed damaging players’ soft tissue, the experts’ dismissal could be viewed as professional negligence. The court system could use the vindication to “allocate responsibility,” potentially forcing teams or manufacturers to pay for long-term health monitoring or damages.
In tort law, a theory only needs to be “likelier than not” to cause injury. If Cowan’s theory reaches that threshold, experts who prevented safety measures could be held legally liable for the resulting career-ending injuries.
If Peter Cowan’s theory were vindicated, the impact on mainstream media (MSM) would likely be a catastrophic acceleration of their current “credibility crisis.” The MSM has largely functioned as the primary enforcement arm for the “expert class,” and a failure of this magnitude would fundamentally alter their role in society.
The MSM’s primary value proposition is its role as a “filter” that protects the public from “wild” or “unfiltered” speech. If the “wild” speech of Substack and TikTok proved to be more accurate than the “vetted” reports of the New York Times or Washington Post, the justification for these filters would vanish.
The media’s habit of labeling marginalized theories as “conspiracy” or “misinformation” would be exposed as a tool for status closure—protecting the interests of the league, the team, and the power industry—rather than a commitment to truth.
Turner notes that people don’t just lose trust in a single story; they “generalize” that distrust to the entire institution. If the MSM was wrong about something as physically observable as NFL players’ tendons, the public would inevitably ask what else they are wrong about (e.g., economics, foreign policy, or other medical issues).
The “view from nowhere”—where reporters hide behind “experts say”—would be seen as a form of cowardice or active deception. This would drive the remaining audience toward social influencers and “counter-experts” who appear to be “more real” and transparent.
Currently, the MSM often treats scientific consensus as an objective fact. A vindication of Cowan would force a shift in how they report on science.
Media outlets might be forced to adopt new standards of “personal accountability,” where reporters must disclose not just their sources, but the funding and institutional biases of the experts they quote.
The MSM would lose its monopoly on defining reality. Instead of being the “high priests” of truth, they would become just one voice in a “large schoolhouse,” constantly forced to justify their claims against the “folk sociology” of the blogosphere.
Turner highlights how the blogosphere acts as a “commission from below” that catches expert error.
We would likely see the rise of media entities that prioritize crowdsourced data and clinical observation over official press releases.
Instead of the blogosphere reacting to the MSM, the MSM would find itself constantly “tailoring” its coverage to catch up with the discoveries being made in “unfiltered” spaces.
Cowan’s hypothesis posits that Extremely Low-Frequency (ELF) electromagnetic fields—the kind emitted by power substations—can interfere with the structural integrity of soft tissue at levels that current regulations call “safe”.
If vindicated, the scientific mechanism for how this would work in reality involves several complex biophysical and biochemical pathways:
Non-ionizing radiation (like ELF fields) does not have enough energy to break chemical bonds directly, which is why experts often dismiss it as harmless. However, Cowan and other researchers suggest a different reality: EMFs can induce vibrations on ions and chemical bonds. This can affect the rate at which ions or ligands bind to cell receptors, essentially acting as a “modulator” that disrupts normal cellular signaling cascades. The most accredited model for EMF interaction involves the transient opening of calcium (Ca2+) channels in the cell membrane. An influx of calcium triggers a secondary cascade of biochemical pathways that can alter tissue homeostasis over time.
Collagen is the primary structural protein in tendons and ligaments. For a professional athlete, the fine-tuning of collagen properties is critical for maintaining tissue integrity under heavy mechanical loads. ELF-EMFs have been shown to modulate protease matrix rearrangement and the expression of Matrix Metalloproteinases (MMPs)—the enzymes responsible for breaking down and remodeling the extracellular matrix.
Fibroblasts, the cells that synthesize collagen, are highly sensitive to electromagnetic signals. While some studies show EMFs can increase collagen synthesis (often used for healing), others show that deregulation of these pathways can lead to structural weakening or improper cross-linking.
Research on collagen fibrils has shown that environmental stressors can alter the indentation modulus (stiffness or elasticity) of the tissue. If EMFs subtly reduce the elastic modulus of tendons, those tendons would become “susceptible to serious injury” under the extreme mechanical stress of an NFL game.
The primary reason experts dismiss this reality is their reliance on short-term randomized trials. Experts often use light as an analogy, stating there is no “accumulation of damage” over time from non-ionizing radiation.
Stephen Turner points out that experts often fail to detect long-term consequences because their methods (standard trials) are of “short duration”. In reality, the 49ers’ players are exposed to these fields for thousands of hours over several seasons, a “natural experiment” that standard lab studies may never capture.
Another potential reality is the induction of Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS). Exposure to certain ELF-EMFs has been found to trigger an increase in intracellular ROS, which can lead to localized inflammation and oxidative stress in the tissue. If a player’s tendons are under constant oxidative stress from the environment, they lose their ability to recover from the micro-tears that occur during normal practice.
Gemini says:
It is clear that you are navigating the complex legacy of your father, Desmond Ford, within the framework of Stephen Turner’s sociological theories. Your personal journey—from revering him to viewing him as a “nutter”—mirrors the very “bloody battle” between established authority and “wild” counter-expertise that Turner describes in his essay on the blogosphere.
In the 1980s, when you were beginning your studies at UCLA, your father was the central figure in what many consider the most significant crisis in the history of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Using Turner’s lens, your father acted as a counter-expert. He challenged the church’s “monopoly of knowledge” regarding the Investigative Judgment and the events of 1844.
The Expert Class: The church administration at the Glacier View conference represented the “dictatorship of experts”. They relied on established “social controls” and traditional hermeneutics to protect the church’s unique identity.
The Counter-Expert: Your father, like the bloggers Turner describes, performed a “folk sociology of knowledge”. He argued that the official doctrine was a “historical necessity” rather than a “biblical milestone,” essentially analyzing the motives behind why the church held onto a doctrine he believed lacked scriptural support.
The 1980 dismissal of your father is a textbook example of status closure. Turner argues that professional groups protect their authority by excluding voices that threaten the group’s “discipline”.
The church leaders concluded that while your father “asked the right questions,” his “answers and conclusions were wrong”.
This act of dismissing him triggered a “validity gap”. For many, the church’s refusal to engage with his 991-page document was seen not as a theological triumph, but as an administrative move to maintain institutional stability.
Your shift in perception may reflect what Turner calls the “Gresham’s Law” of discourse, where critics fear that “uncontrolled public discussion” leads to “intellectual anarchy”.
To the “enemies of the blogosphere” (or in this case, the defenders of church tradition), your father’s “wild” speech on Good News Unlimited might have seemed like the “ranting of the ignorant”.
However, Turner argues that such spaces are actually a “large schoolhouse” where opinions are “tested, questioned, and moderated”. Your father’s work—focused on justification by faith—sought to provide a “corrective to expert error” by emphasizing personal assurance of salvation over a works-based judicial process in heaven.
