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We discussed an earlier article by this author once before on Hacker News, which I recall submitting. I was actually embarrassed after submitting the article to

We discussed an earlier article by this author once before on Hacker News, which I recall submitting. I was actually embarrassed after submitting the article to find out that the author pushes his guesses beyond what current research shows and that scientists who work on the same problems mostly don't endorse his conclusions. You'll note, as I should have noted last time, that this New York Times column is an OPINION column, not a reporter's article about established facts. If you read this opinion piece the same way that Malcolm Gladwell encourages his readers to read his essays (as a prompt for further thinking, not claiming that he has the last word), then maybe no harm, no foul, but please be wary of making important health decisions for yourself without gathering second opinions on ideas like this.

jbinto 12y ago
That this is an opinion piece is made obvious by Betteridge's Law: > "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines
- tokenadult 12y ago
  I recall that "Betteridge's Law," which I see from the Wikipedia citations is a new and not particularly widespread idea, was promoted here in the Hacker News community by the site founder and former chief site curator, pg (Paul Graham). While I will agree with the proposition that many articles titled with a yes/no question invite the easy answer no, I don't think that is an invariant property of all such articles. I think it's too cheap and easy on the part of the learned readers here to simply invoke "Betteridge's Law" without reading an article deeply and grappling with more of the article's argument than the article's headline. (That's especially true because sometimes headlines are chosen by editors of a publication, while the text of the article is chosen by the article's author.) I've already indicated that I am not sure I should accept the argument of this article (which brings up issues that are already familiar to me from other reading), but I also am very sure that we shouldn't dismiss every article submitted here with a yes/no question in its title before we read the fine article.
  - RankingMember 12y ago
    I think it's more of a joke "law" meant to discourage lazy click-bait headline-writing.

jbinto 12y ago

That this is an opinion piece is made obvious by Betteridge's Law: > "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines

tokenadult 12y ago
I recall that "Betteridge's Law," which I see from the Wikipedia citations is a new and not particularly widespread idea, was promoted here in the Hacker News community by the site founder and former chief site curator, pg (Paul Graham). While I will agree with the proposition that many articles titled with a yes/no question invite the easy answer no, I don't think that is an invariant property of all such articles. I think it's too cheap and easy on the part of the learned readers here to simply invoke "Betteridge's Law" without reading an article deeply and grappling with more of the article's argument than the article's headline. (That's especially true because sometimes headlines are chosen by editors of a publication, while the text of the article is chosen by the article's author.) I've already indicated that I am not sure I should accept the argument of this article (which brings up issues that are already familiar to me from other reading), but I also am very sure that we shouldn't dismiss every article submitted here with a yes/no question in its title before we read the fine article.
- RankingMember 12y ago
  I think it's more of a joke "law" meant to discourage lazy click-bait headline-writing.