Item — HN Reader

Yes that's true, but I think a lot of the knee-jerk reaction isn't intended to communicate "Stop researching cancer" it's more intended to communicate "Stop linkbaiting us."

If the title said "Might someday" then that would probably be a more accurate picture of where something at this stage of research is at.

Obviously some people here want to know all up-and-coming possibilities, clinical trials, or longshots because we're nerds about it. But others of us only care about the ones that are already succeeding in people. Having titles differentiate the two can avoid the frustration.

3 comments

Ok but after the first 1500 articles you’ve read about cancer breakthroughs, you understand that you’re going to read about a very early phase research project. You’re no longer sucked in by the baity headlines, are you? Do you really click it and then be totally surprised it says “in mice” in the text?

So it sounds like you're arguing linkbait is fine because we all have internalized some general skepticism to fight it. But actually I don't think that's the best approach. For one it takes more cognitive overhead to scan through 40 links and then play the mental "what will I actually get if I click this link?" 40 times.

For the most part HN is great about not having linkbait. But when I do see something that sounds improbably good I just go straight to the comments and see if other people find the article legit (as is the case here).

We need more research into immunization against clickbait titling.

On HN one of the things I enjoy and want more of is early news on medical breakthrough; which by its nature is unlikely to be "in humans". So from my pov if it is "in humans" then please put that in the title, otherwise leaving it out "out in animal model x" is just fine and is taken as a given.