So all of a sudden I became fascinated with the flat earth people and then just on Twitter and I hadn't, I had not been a follower of yours until I saw this tweet that somebody I follow must've retweeted a, that you had just given a talk in Edinburgh where I had been. That, well, you know, if you looked at the evidence, then you'd know that what you've been told isn't true. And she said something to the effect of, this is hearsay that we're getting from me right now. And my friend told me that her sister is a flat earther and that her sister is very indignant about the, uh, idea that, um, we don't take them seriously.
And about a week ago, I discovered a friend of mine who is very well educated, she's got a doctorate in biochemistry and, uh, she has a sister who's also very intelligent and very well educated. It's really interesting and serendipitous that we're sitting here because I knew that there was some flat earthers out there and I just thought it was kind of strange and funny. So I have these kinds of civil discussions and that's kind of how I came across a that the flat earth theory and the idea that there are people walking around today who think the world is flat. So I say, I don't believe in this idea of yours, but I'm really interested to figure out why I don't believe it and why you do so let's have a conversation. I've got a podcast where I talk to people who have kind of fringe beliefs and instead of having a conversation that a lot of people would have, if they are a skeptic about something and they're talking to a believer where you shout at them and tell them they're wrong and point out all the evidence and tell them, and it gets into quite a volatile discussion sometimes instead of that, I try and have a civil and polite chat to try and explore the gap between us. Um, what brings people to believe them and what kind of paths lead people there? What evidence supports, uh, supports their position in their minds and how do they engage with the world with that worldview and try and have conversations. These kinds of fringe and extreme and unusual beliefs. To just understand what brings people to ideas that I would look at and say, well, this can't be true.
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Uh, at the time before I was working full time as a, as a skeptic, it was a hobby of mine to, um, be in rooms filled with people who disagree with me. And that's how I came across the flat earth world, uh, is through my, uh, slightly odd, uh, hobby. Who say they can do faith healing.Īnd then another part of my, uh, my time is spent talking to people who believe in, uh, unusual ideas and who are kind of proponents of them. I've spent a lot of my time going to see people who say they can talk the dead. So I spent a lot of my time looking at things like alternative cancer kills and the people who promote those and alternative medicine. And then another part of the, the work that we do, which is the bulk of my work, is to find ideas that aren't backed by evidence and find people who are promoting those ideas, find people who are buying into those ideas and to explore them and figure out if anything can be done to prevent people being confused by them, harmed by them misled by them in those kinds of things. So we'll do work, uh, to forward science education. Uh, the whole purpose of our charity is to promote science to challenge pseudoscience.
So I'm Michael Marshall and I'm the project director of the good thinking society, which is a charity based in the UK. I’m going to let my guest introduce himself in a moment, because he does a better job than I could.
This is Scientific American’s Science Talk, posted on March 27, 2020.
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