--- Ian Betteridge, a British technology journalist, writing in 2009, referring to a much older concept; cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines
Betteridge, from TechCrunch: Irresponsible journalism, archived
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.
See the Wikipedia article for earlier mentions, including Hinchliffe's Rule.
