Worst Science Article of The Week: Facebook Causes Syphilis

Here's what we know about the social networking site, Facebook. It can mysteriously suck away large portions of your day, and make you sneaky, nosy, and narcissistic. It can also, in some extreme cases, cause carpal tunnel syndrome from clicking through the bazillion vacation pictures you posted online. But does Facebook cause syphilis? The short answer is "no." The longer one is "Are you nuts?" But that didn't stop British tabloid The Sun from cranking up its imagination and posting an article titled "Sex diseases soaring due to Facebook romps." The piece was based on a British National Health Service (NHS) report that noted that syphilis cases in the Teesside region, an area of northeast England, were up four fold. It said casual sex in the area had spiked and as a result of people not using condoms, a surprising number of women had contracted syphilis. So, from fewer than ten cases in 2008, the number had now gone up to 30. The Sun quotes Professor Peter Kelly, director of Public Health for NHS Tees: