The Plane Truth: Noted Skeptic’s Newly Published (Posthumous) Book About Flat Earth Theories (2015)

Daniel Loxton (Old) Insight blog, Posts March 24, 2025Bob Schadewald, creationism, flat earth, history of skepticism, Lois Schadewald, memorial, NCSE, pseudoscience, Robert J Shadewald, skepticism, zetetic astronomy 0 Comment

This article was originally published at the defunct Insight blog at Skeptic.com on Nov 19, 2015. An archived version is available here.

Explore Bob Schadewald’s final project, a book on the topic of his most specialized area of skeptical expertise: Flat Earth theories.

I’m very pleased to learn that The Plane Truth, the unfinished final work of skeptical scholarship by the late Robert J. Schadewald (1943–2000), has now been prepared for publication and released online for free. You can read the book in its web version here, where you also find the EPUB ebook version available for download.

During his life, Bob Schadewald was the world’s leading skeptical expert on the history of flat-Earth advocacy. The pseudoscientific notion that the Earth is a flat disk may seem as quaint as it is preposterous, but so-called “Zetetic Astronomy” enjoyed a surprisingly strong period of public prominence in the UK and US during the 19th century—attracting attention from debunkers of the period such as Alfred Russel Wallace¹ (see Skeptic Vol. 20, No. 3) and Richard Anthony Proctor, and prompting reflections from later thinkers including George Bernard Shaw and George Orwell. During the 20th century the relative sophistication of Zetetic Astronomy collapsed into muddled conspiracy theories, parody, and ultra-fundamentalist Biblical literalism; nevertheless, flat-Earth advocacy continues to this day. Read more

Carl Sagan and the Dangers of Skepticism (2015)

Daniel Loxton (Old) Insight blog, Posts March 9, 2025books, Carl Sagan, history of skepticism, Junior Skeptic, skepticism 0 Comment

This article was originally published at the defunct Insight blog at Skeptic.com on May 19, 2015. An archived version is available here.

This is an excerpt from Junior Skeptic 50 (published in 2014 inside Skeptic magazine Vol. 19, No. 1), which is a ten-page biography of Sagan emphasizing his work in scientific skepticism. Junior Skeptic was written for (older) children, and did not include endnotes. Here, I’ve included some relevant citations here for your interest.

Carl Sagan cared a lot about kooky, far out, pseudoscientific topics. He knew this was quite unusual. He introduced a book section on these fringe science topics by saying, “The attention given to borderline science may seem curious to some readers. … The usual practice of scientists is to ignore them, hoping they will go away.”¹ He wished other scientists would care more, and that they were more willing to share their criticisms in public:

I believe that scientists should spend more time in discussing these issues…. There are many cases where the belief system is so absurd that scientists dismiss it instantly but never commit their arguments to print. I believe this is a mistake.²