That chemical is trichloroethylene. Even Science does clickbait now.
"A widely used chemical"
....
A widely known basketball team wins NBA finals
Clickbait?
Does the average reader of science.org know what trichloroethylene is without a prompt?
> Depends on the audience i guess, im not sure i can name a basketball team.
It's bordering on tautology. After all, who else would win National Basketball Association finals - a soccer team? A more astute reader will also observe that NBA finals aren't something casually won by random teams nobody heard of - by the time they get to the finals, the team is already widely-known.
Equally informative, but non-clickbait version of the headline, would be "NBA finals complete" - or, for basketball fans, "Today is 18th of June, 2023".
More people know the names of basketball teams than know the significance of TCE.
"I work for a major search engine (rhymes with Scroogle) and...blah"
Just come out and say it at that point.
A major one.
“Once widely used chemical in the 70s…” or a “Formerly widely used chemical” - was that so hard?
There's just no way to condense enough important information into the headline, and the chemical name would mean nothing for 99% of people.
But if I need to click to get the basic information it's clickbait.
But so all are forced to read it because Parkinson concerns everybody.
Why not simply "Widely used TCE strongly linked to Parkinson's disease"
Key message in the title, further information in the article.
Since this is related to a Marine base, I’ll give you an example. What if the headline was “2/4 gets new Bradleys”
To a Marine, it’s a clear headline: 2nd Battalion 4th Marine Regiment gets new armored personnel carriers”. But to a laymen a better headline would be “Marine unit gets new Tanks.” The former would be almost deliberately meaningless to a casual reader.
But, you don't know that, right? How many people would? 1% has to be a vast overestimate. What exactly are we optimizing for, saving a tiny minority from having to click once and read a single sentence?
It seems like "clickbait" has morphed into "any headline that does not make its associated article completely redundant".
Could it be that upon learning the name, the reader would want to determine context and applicability to their life?
There’s a subtle line between a hook and bait. Maybe this type of a title makes. A scientific topic more approachable.
I’m not sure I’d title it the same way, but it is generating discussion and awareness :)
1. The authors only studied two military camps. One with high TCE levels, and one with low TCE levels. But, obviously, there might be any number of other factors that are different between the two camps with a causal relationship to Parkinson's Disease.
2. There is an active class action lawsuit from this military camp. Doing a limited study that benefits one side of a class action lawsuit should always be taken with some extra skepticism and evaluated for conflicts of interest.