I'm surprised that paper got published, considering the basic spelling errors ("jaws" for "yaws") and errors of fact ("Española Island…a part of the Galápagos Islands").

> considering the basic spelling errors ("jaws" for "yaws")

Missing a single erroroneous instance of a word that won't get caught by spell check may be embarrassing, but it's hardly material.

> ("Española Island…a part of the Galápagos Islands")

https://www.galapagos.org/about_galapagos/about-galapagos/th...

What is the error here?

There are several islands in the world that have had the name Española. The one that is relevant to the discussion about syphilis is now more commonly known as Hispanola, home to Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Columbus visited in 1492/3 and supposedly brought back Syphilis in 1493. The Galapagos islands are in the Pacific, and were never visited by Columbus.

Ah, yeah that make sense. I just looked at the immediate sentence, rather than question which island it referred to. I'm assuming that's the cause for the error too - just someone wanting to reference location and popping the name into Google -, though it's certainly a much more serious error than the spelling mistake.