Welcome back to Glass Half Full, and thanks so much for reading!
Today, we’re continuing our consideration of flat-earthism and other anti-science beliefs. If you’re enjoying this series, I hope you’ll:
So far in this series, I’ve covered how not to talk to a flat-earther and proofs we live on a globe. Today I’m bringing you a roundup of debunkers and myth-busters, mostly from YouTube. Some of them were big influences on my satirical novel, Ship of Fools. All of them spend some time debunking flat-earthers, but some go into other areas of conspiracy theorizing, such as moon-landing denial. (Pro-tip: All flat-earthers are moon-landing deniers, but not all moon-landing deniers are flat-earthers.)
The first article in this series warned against debating with a flat-earther, unless you already have a strong relationship with them, and they seem open to hearing the other side. Assuming you find yourself in such a position, these channels and websites provide the arguments you’ll need to refute the many nonsensical flat-earth claims.
This is just a partial list of those claims:
Gravity is really just density and buoyancy (or else we’re accelerating upwards at a constant 32 feet per second per second, or maybe it’s caused by electromagnetism)
Water can’t stick to a spinning ball
An atmosphere can’t exist next to space (unless it has a container like the Dome of the Firmament)
The moon emits its own light, and it’s a cooling light
Seasons are caused by the sun moving northward or southward in its circuit above Earth
Eclipses aren’t real because shadows don’t work the way we think they do
You can see ships after they’ve gone over the horizon (especially if you have the near-magical Nikon P1000)
You can see objects that are too far away if the Earth were curved (famously, Chicago from Michigan)
Refraction may or may not exist, and especially not when it explains the previous two items
The astronauts aboard the International Space Station are actors filmed with green screens and wires
As you’ll see if you check out these debunkers, this list could go on and on. I’ve started with those I’m most familiar with and moved on from there. SciManDan was the first debunker I ever watched, probably because he’s the most popular of them all.
Don’t worry about messing up your algorithm and getting a bunch of flat-earth or other conspiracy-related videos in your feed. The videos in this list contain clips of flat-earth videos, which doesn’t seem to affect the suggestions. You’ll only get suggestions for other debunkers.
And a final note: none of these creators, except Walter Bislins and Danny Faulkner, are degreed scientists (or if they are, they’ve hidden that fact well). This is not a flaw. It’s important that they’re just regular folks, not representatives of the academy, scientific institutions, or worse, government agencies. And even still, they are written off as shills for a false hegemony.
SciManDan
With over 500,000 subscribers, Dan is the most popular flat-earth debunker on YouTube. His videos are a good blend of snark and facts, and he usually refrains from personal attacks. His channel went viral when he featured a YouTuber who thought a swinging gate proved geocentrism, but this recent video (embedded below) will give a good idea of what he does. Dan doesn’t get into debates with flat-earthers, so there’s not too much of the “reply to the reply to the reply” you get on some other channels. There’s less hostility, too, unless you violate the #1 rule of the Internet and read the comments. In addition to his Flat-Earth Friday series, he offers Tinfoil Tuesdays, in which he skewers other anti-science beliefs.
Dave McKeegan
If you’d rather focus more on facts than snark, then McKeegan might be the debunker for you. As a professional photographer, he’s especially good at taking apart moon-landing deniers’ claims about photos from the Apollo missions, but he also goes into other areas to rebut flat-earth beliefs. I thought I knew something about rocket propulsion, but I learned something new in the video below. He does sometimes reply to flat-earthers who have replied to his videos replying to their videos, which I find annoying.
Professor Dave Explains
Professor Dave (as opposed to British Dave) brings a more science-focused approach to his critiques of the flat-earth model, but also a lot more derision and hostility.1 His first flat-earth video, which I linked to a couple of weeks ago, is still the best and most focused, but his follow-up to the response he got is also worth checking out (below). His later live debates with flat-earthers seem counterproductive. He may have modeled this approach after one of the most prominent flat-earthers, who behaves equally rudely on his own channel. If you want a lot of drama and yelling, scroll through his list for the debate with flat-earther David Weiss (“DITRH”), but if you just want the facts explained well, check out the video linked above or the one embedded below.
Walter Bislin
Bislin, with a masters in systems engineering, is probably most known for his Flat-Earth Dome Simulator, an attempt to recreate the movement of the sun and the moon over the planet if it actually were flat. Crucially, he points out that for this to work, light would have to bend in variable ways unknown to science. For Ship of Fools, I modeled Clive Cuddleshanks’s “astroanamorphoscope” after Bislin’s model. I tried to make Clive just as smart as Bislin, with the mathematical knowledge to make all these (fanciful) motions work in a simulator. On his blog, Bislin covers many other topics to disprove flat-earthism, including ways to assess the curvature of the Earth, refraction, gravity and orbital motion, and more.
Danny Faulkner
Faulkner is a retired professor of astronomy at the University of South Carolina-Lancaster and a Young-Earth Creationist with Answers in Genesis. Yes, it seems like he should fit in the science-denial category, but in 2019 he published a whole book debunking flat-earthers, especially those coming from a fundamentalist Christian perspective. The book features his experiments showing how refraction lets us see objects that should be hidden beyond the curve and refuting the notion that the moon produces its own cooling light. I don’t have any evidence for the effectiveness of this book, but it would be nice to think he brought a few flat-earthers back from the edge of the nonexistent disk.
I modeled the one Creationist in Ship of Fools, Reverend Paul Lee, after Faulkner, at least in so far as his beliefs about the shape and age of the Earth go, and also his treatment of the “distant starlight problem.” Here’s a lecture Faulkner gave at Answers in Genesis on flat-earth beliefs, pointing out their lack of support in the Bible and also offering several scientific refutations.
MCToon (ConspiracyToonz)
MCToon is one of the more combative flat-earth debunkers. Like Professor Dave, he’ll debate them on a live stream, but he sometimes offers videos debunking various flat-earth claims, like the one below.
Mr. Sensible
Mr. Sensible’s claims to fame are his experiments in which he sent balloons above 100,000 feet to photograph the curvature of the Earth. A simple test, really, but he had to account for the distortion produced by even a standard lens. Of course, the flat-earthers refuse to believe the evidence or reproduce the test themselves.
Creaky Blinder
Creaky is combative but also hilarious in a good-natured way, and you gotta love his accent. His videos are fast-paced and entertaining, and feature a good amount of fact-based refutation.
Seek Truth Speak Truth
STST is a flat-earther who came back to the globe. He fell for the flat-earth hoax, specifically Nathan Oakley’s version of it, producing about a dozen videos claiming to prove it. Then SciManDan’s pal and colleague, Conspiracy Catz, debunked one of STST’s videos, showing him that a mountain in a photo of Blackpool, England, was partially obscured by the curve of the Earth. This violates the old maxim that no one has ever been persuaded of anything by an argument on the Internet. STST must be the exception that proves the rule that facts alone won’t dissuade people from their false beliefs. He talks about his “conversion” in the video below. He covered how he was received back into the “globe-earth community” in an appearance on the SciManDan podcast (now defunct),
So that’s it, your roundup of flat-earth debunkers. To paraphrase YouTubers, if you liked this post, smash that like button, and don’t forget to subscribe and share. Or you can:
Come back on Friday for Chapter 13 of Ship of Fools, “Jackie Onassis,” in which Liz gets used to the kidnapped life.
For instance, he got involved in the kerfuffle between Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Terrence Howard with a video titled “Terrence Howard Is Legitimately Insane.” It has 1.6M views so far, so this stuff sells. But compare that to Tyson’s own polite but factual response, a model of science communication.
This is a great roundup! And it shows your dedication to research.