A
lot of people believe in Flat Earth Theory. Some may be surprised to learn that
people still hold such views. After all, the Earth has been photographed from
space. But such photos could have been faked by the evil forces who secretly
control the world, right?
And
all those centuries of scientific evidence suggesting that the Earth is
spherical could be wrong, right? In America interest in the flat-Earth movement
appears to be growing. In September Bobby Ray Simmons Jr., a rapper also known
as B.o.B, launched a crowd-funding campaign to send satellites into orbit to
determine the Earth’s shape. On November 9th, 500 “flat-Earthers” assembled in
North Carolina for the first annual Flat Earth International Conference.
Data
from Google Trends show that in the past two years, searches for “flat earth”
have more than tripled (see chart). Conspiracy theories are not always
harmless. The bogus notion that vaccines cause autism has led to a decline in
immunization rates in some places, which has allowed outbreaks of measles. Skepticism
about climate change has infiltrated schools.
A
recent survey found that a third of American science teachers tell their
students that climate change is driven in part by natural causes. One in ten
say humans play no role in it. Conspiracy theories are appealing because they
offer simple explanations for complex phenomena, or because they let people
believe they are in possession of secret knowledge that the powerful wish to
suppress. They tend to be most popular among less-educated people who do not
trust public institutions. They are extremely common in dictatorships, where
people assume, often correctly, that the authorities are lying.
Simply
rebutting conspiracy theories may make adherents even more entrenched in their
views. (If “they” are so keen to deny it, it must be true!) Absence of evidence
is taken as evidence of a fiendishly effective cover-up.
Some
conspiracy theories are irrefutable—the American government cannot prove, for
example, that it is not storing dead aliens in a secret underground laboratory.
If schools were better at teaching analytical thinking, that might reduce the
appeal of conspiracy theories and it would not hurt if governments were more
open and trustworthy. Meanwhile, the best response is often to ignore the
tinfoil-hat brigade.
After
the rapper B.o.B sparked an argument on Twitter about the shape of the Earth in
2016, one of the groups supposedly responsible for misleading the public on
this point, NASA, chose not to weigh in. A spokeswoman told the Washington
Post:
“we don’t think there’s a debate to be had.”
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