If I already know TCE is dangerous and need to be avoided I might not need to read the article or I could if I need further information.

But if I need to click to get the basic information it's clickbait.

But it’s not written for you specifically.

Since this is related to a Marine base, I’ll give you an example. What if the headline was “2/4 gets new Bradleys”

To a Marine, it’s a clear headline: 2nd Battalion 4th Marine Regiment gets new armored personnel carriers”. But to a laymen a better headline would be “Marine unit gets new Tanks.” The former would be almost deliberately meaningless to a casual reader.

> If I already know TCE is dangerous and need to be avoided I might not need to read the article or I could if I need further information.

But, you don't know that, right? How many people would? 1% has to be a vast overestimate. What exactly are we optimizing for, saving a tiny minority from having to click once and read a single sentence?

It seems like "clickbait" has morphed into "any headline that does not make its associated article completely redundant".

Could the article be primarily written for people who don’t know about TCE?

They would read it if TCE is in the title.

But so all are forced to read it because Parkinson concerns everybody.

Why not simply "Widely used TCE strongly linked to Parkinson's disease"

Key message in the title, further information in the article.

So instead they use wording that means nothing to 100% of people and require anyone to click through to the article to discover what they're talking about.

If you have the name you can start searching for things that has it right away.

Wouldn’t the logical place to start your research be the article itself so you know the context?