The popular, social media-focused website I F**king Love Science (IFLS) has drawn scrutiny for their clickbait headlines, superficial coverage, a penchant for rewriting other sites' articles, and essentially summarizing and hyping already hyped press releases. To be clear, IFLS is not journalism. Rather, the site popularizes science in the flashy mold of a World Wrestling Entertainment event.

This is a description IFLS seems to embrace, because despite being repeatedly accused of covering science poorly, they keep right on doing so.

Just this month, they've already published at least five stories with hilariously bad headlines and vapid writing.

1. "Study Of 1.5 Million Men Finds Link Between Penis Shape And Cancer Risk"

IFLS' recipe to produce this gem of an article – now shared more than 11,500 times – was simple: a little scaremongering about male genitalia and cancer. The observational study it was based on reported that men with Peyronie's disease had a slightly higher chance to develop stomach cancer, melanoma, and testicular cancer compared to control subjects. Peyronie's disease is characterized by a growth of fibrous plaques on the penis and can cause abnormal curvature. A slight curvature of the penis is normal, however, and not indicative of Peyronie's.

Alas, this nuance didn't stop IFLS' James Felton from writing, "They found that people with a curved penis had a significantly higher chance of developing several types of cancer." Felton also neglected to mention that the cancers referenced in the study are extremely rare (a 2.2% lifetime risk for melanoma, 0.8% lifetime risk for stomach cancer, and 0.4% lifetime risk for testicular cancer), so the meager increase in risks shown in the study likely won't affect cancer rates that much.

But IFLS probably didn't care about the truth. By making men worry about the shape of their members, IFLS turned a nothing-burger study into a goldmine of hits.

2. "Two Male Lions Spotted Having Sex In Kenya"

This headline actually wouldn't be that terrible... if it were actually true. IFLS writer Dami Olonisakin reposted a picture taken by wildlife photographer Paul Goldstein showing two male lions in Kenya's Masai Mara National Reserve on top of each other and assumed the pair were having sex. As Live Science contributor Stephanie Pappas reported after a simple and brief call with Craig Packer, the director of the Lion Research Center at the University of Minnesota, the lions weren't actually mating, just bonding. IFLS could have easily done what Pappas did, but they undoubtedly preferred clicks to facts.

3. "Something Is Moving Deep Under The Surface Of Dwarf Planet Ceres"

The dwarf planet Ceres, orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter, is pockmarked with surface scars called pit chains, resembling short canyons. NASA astronomers were curious what caused them. IFLS was interested in turning their findings into clickbait.

Needless to say, the culprit is not a giant space slug. According to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory press release from which the IFLS story was rewritten, it's almost certainly subsurface "upwelling material." In other words, rock. Imagine that.

4. "Christmas Music Could Harm Your Mental Health"



Everybody knows that Christmas music should not be played until after Thanksgiving (or at least they should), but what we probably didn't know is that it's potentially dangerous!

Yeah... no. Quoting a single scroogey clinical psychologist, IFLS reported that Christmas songs can make us feel "trapped" by holiday activities and stressors. Moreover, they added that the constant caroling makes workers "lose focus." Even if these unsubstantiated claims were true, they certainly don't constitute "harms." So by all means, carry on dreaming of a white Christmas.

5. "There's Something Monstrous Lurking Under Antarctica"

When you read the above headline, did you picture a 50-million-year-old upwelling of abnormally hot rock from Earth's mantle that might explain some of the heat creating Antarctica’s hidden lakes and rivers, as Gizmodo's Ryan Mandelbaum factually reported? Or did you picture a kaiju? Thanks, IFLS.