Giving Compass' Take:

· Diane Mapes takes a look at the real harm caused by "in-your-face" headlines, faulty stories of scientific research, and mass coverage of such stories with little evidence.

· Is it ethical for authors to mislead readers with a faulty headline? Is it ethical to publish such stories without solid evidence of this information?  How is confusion raised through the spread of these stories? 

· Read more about news in the digital age and the battle against overhyped headlines. 

Reading science headlines may cause cancer. Not really. But reading headlines alone — particularly misleading or mendacious ones that distort scientific findings — can cause real harm.

“There is definitely fallout from misunderstanding science,” said Dr. Ruth Etzioni, a biostatistician with Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. "Policymakers who have to evaluate the evidence and find the truth in all of this noise may push for the wrong policies." And individuals, she said, may reject beneficial interventions and embrace those that are costly and potentially harmful.

Headlines are not the takeaway, Etzioni said.

“They should only be used to decide whether to read the article or not,” she said. “They’re written to grab eyeballs and they’re often inflammatory and not scientific.”

But headlines — often written to gain clicks, not convey information — have become the takeaway in our TLDR (too long, didn’t read) society.

And it doesn’t stop there.

Read the full article about overhyped headlines and snarled statistics in science by Diane Mapes at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.