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Betteridge’s law of headlines is one name for an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

My personal favorite is Poe’s Law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law?wprov=sfti1

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It seems like Betteridge's Law has been catching on among the better sort of journalist. The NYT recently ran "Is Loneliness a Health Epidemic?", and I shook my head in anticipation of another article wildly overselling a weak claim. Instead, it was a measured piece cataloging excess hype on the topic and problems with commonly-cited loneliness studies. The author eventually arrived at "loneliness is a real concern, but not an epidemic".

Which is all tangential, but it's great to finally see a journalist write a yes/no headline and actually notice that the answer is 'no'.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/09/opinion/sunday/loneliness...

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