Language Log has an excellent critique of the media stories around AVPR1a and its effect on male behavior. This sort of media criticism is warranted, but I don't know exactly how headline writing will clearly communicate that a given dependent variable might have myriad independent variables. Huntington's disease was easy to write a headline for; trying to juice up a story about genes which explain 0.3% of the variation in height is going to be a taller order....
More like this
Summary: Lott and Hassett have not analyzed their data correctly---it actually shows no evidence that headlines are biased against Republicans.
Here are two headlines about the same subject:
We live in a short-attention-span age. I have a huge array of feeds spewing information at me like the proverbial firehose, so I often don't do more than look at the headline and RSS excerpt, and I don't think I'm alone.
I've had occasion to remark a number of times how much of what is reported as "science news" is just warmed over press releases from university media departments or company flacks. I read them anyway, often sucked in my a headline that turns out to oversell the case.