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The authors of the Lausanne study state, in their paper, that "most" sudden cardiac deaths of young athletes aren't reported to these journals - which were the only ones the authors considered. Goodsciencing.com, on the other hand, cast a very wide net.

The Lausanne study searched a very wide net using the following resources.

"Medline (OVID Web, 1966–2004), PubMed (1966–2004), Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, EBM Reviews – ACP Journal Club, Cinahl (1982–2004), Heracles, Web of Science, Scopus (1960–2004)."

Some of those are databases and databases of databases. Seems like a pretty thorough search to me.

You're going to tell me that a search of all of those scientific references and databases is going to find less real cases of heart related SCD than what was compiled in the article in question??

You're going to tell me that a search of all of those scientific references and databases is going to find less real cases of heart related SCD than what was compiled in the article in question??

Yes, because those are databases of scientific journals, not news reports. A very small percentage of deaths that get reported on social media or in some local news source are written up in scientific journals.

Why can't you take the study's authors word for it?

"The most important limitation however is that SCD in young athletes as reported in the published and studied papers is certainly underestimated. Most of the events occur in youth potentially involved in sports activities, which are not reported in the literature. SCD is therefore likely to have comprised more than the 1101 athletes in the 38-year period across the world, which we reported"

That's why the study didn't attempt to quantify the overall number of these deaths.

Now, how about the fact that the study only looked at certain cardiac events while the goodsciencing.com list seemingly includes death from any cause?