It's possible this comment should be the top comment on all pop science news reports.

Edit: ideally people could down vote stories. Maybe only at some super high karma?

Frodo: 'It's a pity Bilbo didn't kill Gollum when he had the chance.'

Gandalf: 'Pity? It's a pity that stayed Bilbo's hand. Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends. My heart tells me that Gollum has some part to play in it, for good or evil, before this is over. The pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many.'

TL;DR: One can effectively downvote stories via the "flag". Use it with great care.

I didn't flag the story because it isn't offensive or blatantly inappropriate. I'm not sure you need to warn people off that. But I'm also pretty sure that if this stuff was banished to buzzfeed Hacker News would be much better and buzzfeed would not suffer in finding the audience. I cannot imagine a serious issue with it simply not showing up at all for the same reasons we don't like highly political stories:

Nobody is convincing anybody, and there's not anything you can do about it, it just makes you worry so you read the story. It isn't click bait, but it is something like think bait.

There's no reason for hiding news about nascent lines of research. They are interesting and relevant.

People should just not make life choices based on them.