If I'm assuming good faith, I'd say that Mattingly is, as the lede notes, best known amongst the populace for being scrubbed from 13. If you weren't alive to witness 13 or 16, the movie is probably where most people get all their Ken Mattingly information. This does him a disservice but is probably what people will know him best for.

Truth be told, I think most people won't know the name or even Apollo 16, but will know Apollo 13.

To be fair, his involvement didn't end with "not going to the Moon"; he was instrumental in saving the lives of three other people who didn't go to the moon, and arguably therein saving a generation of science and cosmology from being lumped in with recklessness and death.

The cold start procedure is probably in the top 100 most notable on-the-fly hacks in human history (though my understanding is that it was actually _less_ challenging in real life than is depicted in the film, once the test pilots got together and compared notes).

The headline is unfair, I agree. But his contribution to the Apollo 13 mission was significant.

This was literally my first thought. Yeah, it's worth mentioning in the article; it's definitely not the thing he himself would brag about/headline in his life.

"Apollo 16 astronaut..."

Who?

"Astronaut scrubbed from Apollo 13..."

Oh yeah! I know that guy, I remember him from the movie.

The headline is honestly quite disrespectful