Misleading headlines

We are wired to take in information as quickly as we can. This happens in everyday life as well as when we skim the media for something we deem worth spending our time reading.
That we go fast-food like through the headlines is true- according to a study, almost 70% of people only read the headlines of a story. This post was a test on this where the actual text went: ‘’Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.. ‘’, a dummy text. It has 49.8k shares, half of the shares could very well be by people who haven’t read the whole article.

Naturally, all publishers want to catch the attention of the screen-swiping mass. There is a big competition. But it seems like at times, the truth is slightly twisted in the titles for this purpose.

There is a catergory people become very emotional over: food. Precisely, meat. One study has sparked many emotional reactions:

OMG! Bacon causes cancer http://nypost.com/2015/10/26/omg-bacon-causes-cancer/
The Science Behind How Bacon Causes Cancer http://time.com/4087935/cancer-meat-bacon/

The American Cancer Society actually states in their report that ‘’ It classifies ‘the consumption of red meat as probably carcinogenic’ and that ’50 gram of processed meat eaten daily increases the risk of colorectal cancer by 18%. Nowhere, bacon is mentioned explicitly (but it sausages is in the notes).
Which hungry vegan author spread the terrifying news that the beloved bacon causes cancer to get his food blog story clicked, commented on and shared by the ‘readers’ who didn’t read the whole story? I don’t know.

Something similar happened in the science world again: Mini ice-age in 2030!
A paper predicted a 60% fall in sunspot numbers by 2030s. Nowhere did it mention a cooling of the climate. But many journalists didn’t ask the experts and drew their own conclusions.
The Telegraph warned: ’’the earth is 15 years from a mini ice age that will cause bitterly cold winters during which rivers such as the Thames freeze over.’’
The site ifls commented on it like this: ‘’The media failed in its duty to investigate and inform. It didn’t seek expert comment to put the research into context. Instead journalists tried to answer technical climate science questions themselves, and mostly got it wrong.’’

Or maybe, some authors were simply click-baiting. Considering these stories, it seems clever to not believe all headlines to be completely correct in a literal way.