Somehow you read all that and missed the first sentence.

Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

I think studies that look at the article's response are going to give a very different outcome than the real world result. The heuristic exists because a lot of news is overhyped halfsense trying to generate clicks (or draw eyeballs in the pre-digital world). So even if the article suggests a yes answer, a no outcome is still probably more likely.