PSA: my journalism prof in 2009 said 'if a headline asks a question, the answer is usually no,' and I've used that rule ever since

Ruby Smith · 2026-10-01T17:40:04.746916+00:00

I had a prof at Kent State who drilled this into us every single week. Fast forward to now and I watch viral articles like 'Is this common food secretly ruining your sleep?' get shared 40,000 times while the actual study behind it had 12 people in it. I pulled up three of those stories last week and none of them linked to the real research, just other articles quoting other articles. Anyone else use a weird old rule like this to sniff out junk before they even click?

Vivisector

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PSA: my journalism prof in 2009 said 'if a headline asks a question, the answer is usually no,' and I've used that rule ever since | Debunk This Article - Vivisector