How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure

Re:How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure by anigbrowl on Monday December 30, 2019 @05:17PM (#21917152)

I really think it's better to defer to the original authors or the submitter on titles. Retroactive title changes have become common on HN and they're somewhat annoying. Certainly the original title upset some people, but perhaps that is a conversation worth having; Statnews isn't a frivolous news outlet, and the revised title elides the intradisciplinary conflict at the heart of this story, creating the impression that researchers in that field had moved toward some other consensus (which does not appear to be the case).

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Re:How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure by dang on Tuesday December 31, 2019 @12:48PM (#21922878)

HN's way of dealing with titles has been around forever and functions surprisingly well overall. When grumblings come up they are usually reasonable and we usually react by changing the title until readers stop grumbling. But these cases are a small percentage of the total. Sometimes the community is divided about what's reasonable, in which case every title change generates grumbling and the process never converges. In that case we either stick with the original title or just make a call and move on.

I think you make a good point about this title. In a case like this it's best to break the tie with the original title, so I've changed it back above.

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Re:How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure by anigbrowl on Tuesday December 31, 2019 @06:05PM (#21925416)

Thanks for your thoughtful response Dan. I guess you're right about how long it's been going on, I am probably mis-remembering practices from back when HN was much smaller than today.

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