I’ve always had a diverse set of interests spanning many, many disciplines beyond medicine and trauma care. But I’m always thinking about how I can apply concepts and facts learned in those other topic areas to my main area of interest.

I recently came across an interesting concept while browsing articles in the mainstream media. Ever notice how often you see medically focused pieces with titles phrased as questions? Why do they do this all the time?

It turns out, there is a reason for it. It all boils down to something called Betteridge’s Law. Ian Betteridge was a British technology journalist who commented on a TechCrunch article in 2009. He observed the following:

This story is a great demonstration of my maxim that any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word “no”. The reason why journalists use that style of headline is that they know the story is probably bullshit, and don’t actually have the sources and facts to back it up, but still want to run it.

Betteridge was not necessarily the inventor of this concept. It appears to have been initially published in a 1991 compilation of Murphy’s Law variants. It was referred to as Davis’ Law, though no explanation of who Davis was was provided.

A more tame version of Betteridge’s Law is, “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.” If the author were more confident of the answer, they would have written it as an assertion, not a question.

So I was curious. Is this true of article titles in medical journals, too? I randomly selected a few articles from the Journal of Trauma over the past 15 years. Here they are:

• Does computed tomography scan add any diagnostic value to the evaluation of stab wounds of the anterior abdominal wall? A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery 88(4):p 572-576, April 2020. | DOI: 10.1097/TA.0000000000002587
• Can we ever stop worrying about venous thromboembolism after trauma?. Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery 78(3):p 475-481, March 2015. | DOI: 10.1097/TA.0000000000000556
• Is Early Reimaging CT Scan Necessary in Patients With Grades III and IV Renal Trauma Under Conservative Treatment?. The Journal of Trauma: Injury, Infection, and Critical Care 68(1):p 9-12, January 2010. | DOI: 10.1097/TA.0b013e3181ad5835

After reading the papers, the answer to each question was indeed no! Now, I am not suggesting that the answer is always no for every title phrased as a question, or that, as Betteridge said, “the story is probably bullshit.” But there does seem to be a significant correlation in our literature.

Bottom line: When doing your journal reading, look at the article title to see if it is phrased as a question. If so, consider that it might have already answered itself, and you may not need to spend as much time reading it in detail!