4 ms·

I didn't find it clickbaity at all. The contents of the article were exactly what I expected based on the headline, and I didn't know this was possible. The re

I didn't find it clickbaity at all. The contents of the article were exactly what I expected based on the headline, and I didn't know this was possible. The really interesting thing here is that Alzheimer's seems to be transmissible from person to person via biological material. The BBC headline you quoted, "Medicine stopped in 1980s linked to rare Alzheimer's cases", totally buries the lede and is borderline misleading.

eek2121 3y ago
I didn't either, and I didn't even read the article. The headline was actually dead on factual for me.
- oli-g 3y ago
  For me as well, and I didn't even read the headline.
jessriedel 3y ago
My reading is that m-i-l is using "clickbaity" to mean "doesn't prevent all possible wrong conclusions one could draw from the headline". (In this case, the wrong conclusion would be thinking that because there exists cases of alzheimer being transmitted through some mechanism that Alzheimer was contagious.) While it's certainly understandable that we are all tired of clickbait that purposefully misleads the reader, imo we should not overcorrect by demanding that headlines cannot be misinterpreted by arbitrarily ignorant readers.
- m-i-l 3y ago
  That's right. Living in the UK and taking an interest in popular science during the "mad cow disease crisis"[0], I had been aware that prion diseases can be transmitted in humans if (for example) you eat (infected) brains of your dead ancestors[1], but the headline as originally submitted ("Scientists document first-ever transmitted Alzheimer's cases") did suggest to me that we might be at the start of something altogether new and much more alarming. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopathy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopat... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease)
  - jessriedel 3y ago
    Ahh, yea, fair. I hadn't realized the headline changed. The original is unnecessarily vague, contributing to misinterpretation without benefit.

eek2121 3y ago

I didn't either, and I didn't even read the article. The headline was actually dead on factual for me.

oli-g 3y ago
For me as well, and I didn't even read the headline.

jessriedel 3y ago

My reading is that m-i-l is using "clickbaity" to mean "doesn't prevent all possible wrong conclusions one could draw from the headline". (In this case, the wrong conclusion would be thinking that because there exists cases of alzheimer being transmitted through some mechanism that Alzheimer was contagious.) While it's certainly understandable that we are all tired of clickbait that purposefully misleads the reader, imo we should not overcorrect by demanding that headlines cannot be misinterpreted by arbitrarily ignorant readers.

m-i-l 3y ago
That's right. Living in the UK and taking an interest in popular science during the "mad cow disease crisis"[0], I had been aware that prion diseases can be transmitted in humans if (for example) you eat (infected) brains of your dead ancestors[1], but the headline as originally submitted ("Scientists document first-ever transmitted Alzheimer's cases") did suggest to me that we might be at the start of something altogether new and much more alarming. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopathy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopat... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease)
- jessriedel 3y ago
  Ahh, yea, fair. I hadn't realized the headline changed. The original is unnecessarily vague, contributing to misinterpretation without benefit.