Facts say syphilis gets caught by 'resting' close to others (10)
I believe the answer is:
statistics
'facts' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both related to thinking as well as being plural nouns.
Perhaps you can see an association between them that I don't see?
'syphilis gets caught by resting close to others' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'gets' could be 'is' (I've seen this in other clues) and 'is' is found within the answer.
'caught' could be 'c' (cricket abbreviation) and 'c' is found in the answer.
'by' could be 'at' and 'at' is found within the answer.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
'say' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for statistics that I've seen before include "'20, 16 20, and _____'" , "results" , "Branch of maths" , "(Study of) quantitative data" .)