72 Scientific American, May 2020 Illustration by Matt Collins
ANTI GRAVITY
THE ONGOING SEARCH FOR
FUNDAMENTAL FARCES
Steve Mirsky has been writing the Anti Gravity column since
a typical tectonic plate was about 36 inches from its current location.
He also hosts the Scientific American podcast Science Talk.On February 22 “Mad” Mike Hughes died when his self-built
steam rocket crashed shortly after takeoff. Hughes was a famous
flat-earther, one of a growing group who do not accept that Earth
is an oblate spheroid (which it is). His fatal launch was apparently
general daredevilry and not an attempt to gather data for flat-
earthism. Although coverage by our friends at Space.com quoted
him as saying in a 2017 documentary, “I’m going to build my own
rocket right here, and I’m going to see it with my own eyes what
shape this world we live on.”
Either way, Hughes’s demise put flat-earth belief in the news
briefly, which got me to dig out an interview I did last year with
Michael Marshall, project director of the Good Thinking Society.
The U.K. society has taken on the Sisyphean task of “encouraging
curious minds and promoting rational inquiry.” And Marshall has
become well versed in why on Earth people would believe it’s flat.
“Some do believe it’s a disk,” Marshall said. “But there’s more
than one way to think it’s flat ... some people believe that Earth is
actually an infinite plane in all directions ... and so when I first
came across the flat-earth movement in 2013, this was quite a
vociferous debate.”
While those factions fought at conferences, other attendees
were actually round-earth accepters who thought it
would be fun to mix it up with the flat-earthers.
Turned out it wasn’t.
“And so they were stomping into these argu-
ments, saying, well, what about photos of Earth
from space and what about ships going over the
horizon,” Marshall said, “not realizing that those
were the first things [flat-earthers] thought about.”
And they had convincing, if incorrect, responses.
“And so [the flat-earthers] were winning those argu-
ments ... and in winning those arguments, they
were converting even more people.”
Then, in 2016, some YouTube videos threw gas-
oline on the two-dimensional fire. Marshall said the
video content was straightforward: “Proof number
one: the horizon looks flat. Proof number two: even
if you go up a mountain, the horizon looks flat. Proof
number three: water can’t stick to a curved surface.
It always goes level, so there’s no way it could stick
to a ball. They’re all very simplistic arguments.”
YouTube’s recommendation algorithm appears
to have then amplified the signal by bringing flat-
earth info to the attention of fans of other question-
able notions. “So you’d be watching a video about
moon-landing denial,” Marshall explained, “and
YouTube would say, ‘I think someone who’s a bit into
moon-landing denial might also be into the flat-earth theory.’ And
it would float it there as a suggestion. And if people clicked it, that
solidified that link.” Flat-earth belief, quirky and perhaps humor-
ous on its own, thus became part of what Marshall called “an eco-
system of conspiracy theory.”
“One thing that really surprised me at a convention I went to,”
Marshall said, “was how little material was about the flat earth.”
For example, he saw a presentation by a conspiracy theorist about
the New World Order and the Illuminati. “But he was also point-
ing out how dinosaurs were faked.” The presenter tapped into the
mother lode of conspiracy thinking by recommending a virulently
anti-Semitic book that allegedly reveals what’s really going on
behind the scenes. Which reminds me, I have to wrap this column
up so I can get to the Secret Jewish Cabal That Runs the Global
Media meeting. (George Soros is serving hamantaschen!)
Not surprisingly, antivaccine material and other terrible health
information are also passed around in conjunction with flat-earth
ideas. Marshall recalled a convention speaker telling the assem-
bled that “you can cure all manner of diseases, including HIV and
AIDS, by drinking or injecting your own urine.” I would have
thought that even someone who didn’t know that Greek mathe-
matician Eratosthenes nicely estimated Earth’s circumference
more than 2,000 years ago—proving that the planet was round—
would consider urine injection to be a piss-poor idea.JOIN THE CONVERSATION ONLINE
Visit Scientific American on Facebook and Twitter
or send a letter to the editor: [email protected]Flat Wrong
If there’s a bad idea, they’ll get around to it
By Steve Mirsky