Scientist 1: If we put a sugar cube into water whose temperature is exactly 74.7373 degrees centigrade, the water will likely turn pink. here is our evidence for this.

Scientist 2: we tried this and found that if the water is cooling that it doesn’t work, it has to remain at a constant temperature.

Scientist 3: we tried it with refined and unrefined sugar. unrefined sugar did not work.

scientist 1: we took another look - it seems there was some weird additive in the refined sugar, when this additive added to water at 74.7373 degrees centigrade the water turns pink.

that’s a very silly and stupid example of “challenging” other scientist’s work. you precisely explain what you tried and how it differed, in the hope it leads to a more specific and accurate picture down the line.

flat earthers et. al just “say stuff” they think is right, where the evidence does not actually challenge any hypothesis or existing evidence because the claims are just … bad.

this is not “challenging” science. it is stubborn ignorance. pure and simple.

most of it is so easy to refute any random youtuber with a spare hour can do it (read: 6-12 months [0])

- https://youtu.be/2gFsOoKAHZg

however, your point about platforming is important, because people who wouldn’t have had a soapbox 15 years ago, now have a soapbox anyone in the world can find them on.

if you’re looking for something to confirm your world view, there’s something on the internet for you.

rule 1 of the internet should be spammed in front of everyone’s eyes for seven minutes before anyone is allowed to use a web browser — don’t believe anything you read on the internet.

[0]: there’s a running joke about how long this person takes to make new videos.

I figured your link would be this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTfhYyTuT44

(Folding Ideas, "In Search of a Flat Earth")

He takes a couple of their claims seriously about what one will see when attempting particular experiments involving a very large lake, attempts them, sees the results one would expect if the Earth were curved, and reports this to some flat earth community forum, refining the experiment as they suggest ways he may have screwed it up, and continuing to find curvature (obviously).

The real story is how they react to contrary evidence delivered entirely on their terms, and where that community was heading four years ago (beware—I guess—that part also becomes necessarily "political").

[EDIT] I guess I buried the lede for this site's interest, which is that the video devotes a fair bit of time to how the Youtube "algorithm" took a little success for Flat Earth videos as a cue to aggressively promote them to people it identified as maybe liking them (those inclined to fall down that particular rabbit hole—which involves a lot more than just the specific belief that the earth is flat), but now flat earth is in decline, because that and other "algorithms" started sending the same folks to... Q-anon content instead.

Incidentally, there was a somewhat-big documentary on Flat Earth some years ago that included some folks from a flat earth convention trying some experiments very similar to the ones depicted in this video (involving visibility of objects across a large lake), with predictable outcomes.

> don’t believe anything you read on the internet

That's many years beyond usefulness now that governments and companies communicate official information through the internet. You might as well say "don't believe anything ever" which makes the advice useless.

It's fine that people believe false things like flat earth. Why so much pressure to stop that? False beliefs are the default for most people, and they actually serve a purpose. We're mostly not emotionless truth-seeking Spocks. We can have religion and other beliefs that improve our quality of life by providing a sense of belonging or importance, an identity, or a community. You wouldn't go around telling Jews that no, God didn't give the 10 commandments to Moses, stop believing unscientific rubbish just because you read about it in some scroll.