🧲 Academic Clickbait [Neurosurgery Wiki]

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====== 🧲 Academic Clickbait ======

**Academic clickbait** refers to **research articles with exaggerated, provocative, or misleading titles** designed to attract attention, increase citations, or enhance visibility — often at the expense of scientific rigor or substance.

===== 🧠 Key Characteristics =====
  * A title poses a **bold question or dramatic claim**, but the study provides **trivial or obvious findings**.
  * Creates an illusion of **novelty or controversy** that the data do not support.
  * Often seen in low-impact journals trying to **boost relevance or metrics**.
  * Prioritizes **attention over contribution** to scientific knowledge.

===== ⚠️ Why It Matters =====
  * Misleads readers about the importance of the findings.
  * Wastes time and resources of reviewers and researchers.
  * Erodes trust in scientific publishing.

===== 📉 Example =====
| Title                                                  | Reality                                       |
|--------------------------------------------------------|-----------------------------------------------|
| "Can we skip the contrast?"                            | No. The study just confirms contrast is better |
| "Revolutionary AI method for diagnosis"                | It's a logistic regression with a new label    |
| "First ever report..."                                 | A redundant case report on a common condition  |

===== ✅ Best Practice =====
  * Use **accurate and honest titles** that reflect the actual contribution.
  * Avoid **question-based titles** unless truly justified by the study design.
  * Let the **data speak louder than the headline**.