"Weird Earth is about the facts and the people who don't believe them. Don Prothero describes the process of science―and the process of not accepting it. If you're wondering if humans walked on the Moon, if you've wondered where the lost City of Atlantis went, or if you're wondering what your cat will do before an earthquake, check out Weird Earth. (They sure did. It was never lost. And, your cats won't do any more than they ever do.) Don Prothero lays it out for us Earthlings―and it's weird."―Bill Nye, CEO, The Planetary Society
"Written in a clear, readable style, Weird Earth is a science-based analysis of various dubious and 'crank' geological beliefs, and is especially useful to lay readers curious about these so-called unexplained topics."―Benjamin Radford, Deputy Editor, Skeptical Inquirer
"Geologist Prothero (Fantastic Fossils) offers a breath of intellectual fresh air with this amusing look at how to dispel endemic pseudoscience and conspiracy theories through rational thinking. . . . As Prothero takes on one crackpot notion after another, his writing is accessible and often wry. With its wide variety of topics and sharp insights, Prothero's latest delivers something weird for every reader."―Publishers Weekly
"Pairing convincing arguments with photographs and helpful diagrams, Weird Earth is lucid in applying common sense to everyday geological questions and passionate as it calls for scientific literacy."―Rebecca Foster, Foreword Reviews
"Prothero offers plenty of convincing proof that nonsense is nonsense."―Kirkus Reviews
"In his latest, science teacher and proud skeptic Prothero takes on a raft of pseudo- and antiscientific beliefs and handily debunks them: flat earth, hollow earth, young earth, geocentrism, moon landing conspiracies, faked fossils, flood myths, Atlantis, dowsing, and more. He briefly describes these schools of thought, where they come from, and summarizes the scientific evidence which shows that these beliefs are incorrect. But he wants to do more than just debunk. He believes scientists need to explain why and how they come to the conclusions they do."―BOOKLIST / Amer Library Assn
"I really enjoyed it, but part of me is also thinking, 'It's such a bummer that we're in a place where [the author] felt like this was a good thing to write.'"―Phil Ferguson, The Phil Ferguson Show
"If you have any interest in geology and the basics of skepticism, this is a good book for you."―Lee Moller, The God Con
"This book . . . is in a way a coming together of his years of study and analysis of scientific investigations of some of the most prevalent weird ideas from beliefs in flat earth, expanding earth, hollow earth and geocentrism to faith in the paranormal, aliens, UFOs, crystal healing, and even the controversy of the faked moon landing. Although written from the perspective of American realities, the ideas in the book hold true globally. . . . With vivid examples and scientific explanations, the book makes for interesting reading."―Hasan Jawaid Khan, Science Reporter
"Prothero writes well and knowingly. He patiently analyzes one wild claim after another and presents scientific evidence so that no questions remain unanswered. As one reviewer put it, "Prothero provides ample evidence that nonsense is nonsense."―Kim Møller Hansen, Scandinavian UFO Information
"Prothero debunks conspiracy theories and pseudoscience relating to our planet, making for an entertaining slaying of geological fringe ideas. . . . Prothero ends by quoting Carl Sagan and I will steal that quote here. Call me dramatic, but I agree with the sentiment that science is our candle in the dark without which "clutching our crystals and religiously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in steep decline, unable to distinguish between what's true and what feels good, we slide, almost without noticing, into superstition and darkness" (p. 248). Weird Earth is one such candle in the dark and Prothero deserves praise for doing the ungrateful job that most people would rather not do: to patiently explain the reasons why certain ideas are wrong."―The Inquisitive Biologist
About the Author
Donald R. Prothero is a research associate in vertebrate paleontology at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. He has taught college geology and paleontology for forty years at institutions such as Columbia University, Vassar College, Knox College, and Pierce College, and currently at Cal Poly Pomona. For twenty-seven years, he was a professor of geology at Occidental College in Los Angeles and Lecturer in Geobiology at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. He earned his MA, MPhil, and PhD degrees in geological sciences from Columbia University. He is the author of over 300 scientific papers published in leading journals and over thirty titles in geology, paleontology, and evolutionary biology.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Modern Flat Earthism
In fact, flat-earth beliefs were a rare fringe idea with few followers until relatively recently. In the 1800s, the most famous flat earther was Samuel Rowbotham (1816-1884). In the 1860s, he pioneered the modern flat-earther notion that the earth was a disk centered over the North Pole (Fig. 2.2), bounded on its outer edge by a wall of ice (instead of Antarctica over the South Pole, which cannot exist in their version of geography). The skies above were a dome of fixed stars only 5000 km above the earth's surface, consistent with the old medieval notion of the heavens before the birth of modern astronomy. His ideas were first published in a pamphlet called Zetetic Astronomy, followed by a book called Earth is Not a Globe, and another pamphlet The Inconsistency of Modern Astronomy and its Opposition to the Scriptures, which revealed the Biblical literalist roots of most flat-earth thinking. According to Rowbotham, the "Bible, alongside our senses, supported the idea that the earth was flat and immovable and this essential truth should not be set aside for a system based solely on human conjecture". He is correct in saying this, because there are at least 16 places where the Bible says the earth is flat or talks about the "four corners of the earth" or talks about the "ends of the earth" or the "circle of the earth" or suggests that you can see the entire earth from a high place. Rowbotham and later followers like William Carpenter and Lady Elizabeth Blount kept promoting the idea and founded the Universal Zetetic Society, even after the death of the Rowbotham in 1884. This incarnation of flat earth thinking died out some time after 1904.
After about 50 years of virtually no organized activity, the rebirth of flat earth thinking occurred in 1956 with the founding of Samuel Shenton's International Flat Earth Research Society, based in his home in Dover, England. It was always a tiny group, with a very limited membership corresponding with a primitive homemade mailed newsletter, yet every once in a while they managed to get a short burst of publicity in the newspapers. In the 1960s and 1970s, when Gemini and Apollo astronauts first began to produce images of the earth from space, Shenton dismissed the images as hoaxes (the common belief among flat earthers ever since), saying, "It's easy to see how a photograph like that could fool the untrained eye". Later, he attributed the curvature of the earth seen in NASA photographs as a trick of the curvature of wide-angle lenses. "It's a deception of the public and it isn't right".
After Shenton's death in 1971, Charles K. Johnson picked up the mantle, and inherited Shenton's library from his wife. He reorganized the group as the International Flat Earth Research Society of America and Covenant People's Church, where they maintained their lonely quest at his home in the town of Lancaster in the Mojave Desert. They reached a membership as large as 3500, scattered around the world, paying annual dues of $6 to $10. The society communicated via the quarterly Flat Earth News, a four-page tabloid written and edited almost entirely by Johnson and sent in the mail. As hard-core Biblical literalists, they emphasized all the passages that state that the earth is flat. Every few years, they would get smirking coverage in the newspapers, but their membership declined during the 1990s, especially after a fire at Johnson's house in 1997 destroyed all the records and contact information of the membership. Johnson's wife died shortly afterwards, and then the society itself vanished when Johnson died on March 19, 2001.
Flat earth thinking might still be a tiny fringe belief with no organized leadership were it not for the internet and the ability of believers all around the earth to find each other and organize a virtual community. The Flat Earth Society was resurrected in 2004 by Daniel Shenton (no relation to Samuel) as a web-based discussion forum, then eventually relaunched as an official society, with a large web presence and their own wiki. As of July 2017, they claim a membership of 500. Based the publicity from all the celebrity entertainers and musicians discussed at the beginning of this chapter, however, it appears that flat earth ideas are much more common (see Chapter 18), even if the believers are not official members of the Flat Earth Society. There are a number of other flat earth societies on the internet not affiliated to Shenton's group. The first Flat Earth International Conference met in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Nov. 9 and 10, 2017, with about 500 attendees. In May 2018, there was a three-day flat earth convention in Birmingham, England, with several hundred attendees who traveled all the way to England to hear a spectrum of speakers with a common belief in the flat earth. Even more alarming, about a third of millennials are not convinced that the earth is round (discussed in Chapter 18). And there are calls on the internet for a reality show to let the flat earthers test their ideas and actually try to travel off the edge of the earth!
