When the Earth Was Flat: All the Bits of Science We Got Wrong

by Graeme Donald

From pseudoscience to incorrect assumptions and unfounded belief, science hasn’t always been right…

Contrary to recent debate on the internet, nowadays we are fairly confident that the earth is not flat and that we are in fact inhabitants of a spherical planet. However, this was not always the case, with a widespread belief that if you reached the horizon, you would simply fall off into space.

Along with assumptions about the health benefits of heroin, the advantages of injecting monkey glands into the human body and bumps on your head being indicators of personality and temperament, science has a colourful past. In this entertaining and informative look at a dubious history, Graeme Donald examines the origins of some of the most extraordinary and mind-boggling scientific theories of the past.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, History, Psychology, Popular Science, Science Nature

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[Nathan Haines · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was fine.

It was mostly just a pick up and put down book that i would use to fill some time here and there, and it did the job well in that sense.
The chapters are short and there are some interesting topics. I think what will stick with me the most will be the one about vibrators really, that one will be one i share with my friends forever.

[zeyneb · Rating 3 out of 5]

bu hayatta asla kullanmayacağım bilgileri ellerimde nasıl tutuyorum biliyor musunuz, arkadaşlarımla oturduğumuz masalarda "GE-GEÇEN NE OKUDUM *gereksiz bir kahkaha* VİBRATÖRLERİN NASIL İCAT EDİLDİĞİNİ BİLİYOR MUSUNUZ??!!! *ayağa kalkıp zıplamak* BİLİYOR MUSUNUZ!! *titriyorum* ANLATAYIM!! diyen bir zeynep kadar tehlikeli ve neşeli başka bir canlı daha yok, yaşadığımı böyle anlıyorum.

[Solveig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good fun with interesting examples of really weird theories.

[İlhanCa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eserimiz insanlık tarihindeki yanlış inançlar, bilimsel hatalar ve yanlış anlaşılmalar üzerine odaklanan ilginç konular barındırıyor. Graeme Donald, tarihte "doğru" kabul edilen ama sonradan yanlış olduğu anlaşılan birçok konuya mizahi bir dille yaklaşarak, okuyuculara bu hataların nasıl nasıl değiştiğini anlatıyor.

Kitapta, dünyanın düz olduğuna dair inanıştan kanın salgılarla bağlantısına kadar pek çok ilginç ve yanlışlanmış bilgi yer alır. Donald, tarih boyunca bilimde, tıpta, coğrafyada ve diğer alanlarda karşılaşılan yanlış anlamaları ve yanlış bilgileri eğlenceli bir üslupla aktarmış.

Kitabı okuma sebebim bir challange başlığı olan popüler kültür/bilim. Beğenir miyim derken zevk alarak okudum. Kütüphanede bulunması gereken, bir solukta değil de merak ettikçe kurcalanması gereken bir yapıt diye düşünüyorum ben. Okurlara bilimsel düşüncenin nasıl evrildiğini ve geçmişteki yanlış inanışların nasıl ortaya çıktığını göstermiş.

[Chalchihut · Rating 4 out of 5]

That's a fun book to read. But there were too many facts (or claims?) without any references. [Maybe this is not "that" type of scientific book, okay.]
Even though I learned many things, I had as many questions. Definitely makes you revise your knowledge.

[Carrie Poppy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent

[amal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun book to read; light, informative and doesn’t whitewash history.

[Sinisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

An entertaining little book.
It's actually a collection of interesting scientific blunders that makes us laugh today, but shows us how far did we get in the last 500 years. Just as someone will laugh at us in 500 years from now.
It's mainly focused on medical science but touches upon other sciences too.

[Edwina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Travel book.
The theories it takes on are interesting and silly at the same time, if you look at the book as a light reading material and not as a research paper.
I went through it in a few hours on a plane.

[Anna Kaling · Rating 1 out of 5]

Far from looking at "all" the things science got wrong, this is a really shallow look at a dozen or so discredited ideas or theories. Each is covered in a few hundred words without much insight, wit, or examination of the facts.

Pop science for people who don't really care about science?

[Patricia · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was fine, a collection of absurd and interesting anecdotes, without going into depths, with no references supporting all the science it was about.

[E.R. Yatscoff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh, to have some education in the old days and spout nonsense, risky procedures, and weird theories. Engaging reading and recommended for a gift to those who don't read too much. One can pick up this book and set it aside for a time without missing anything. This was a library book.

[Eddie Maybury · Rating 2 out of 5]

*2.5/5 stars*

The big difference between this book and The Accidental Scientist is mainly relevance. Some stories told here were interesting, but almost none of them remain in common knowledge today (as expected). This book felt more like a history lesson as opposed to a string of interesting stories. Most of the history revolved around ridiculous 200-year old theories which, although intriguing, wasn't as enjoyable of a read as I had expected. Not a bad book, but inferior to Donald's other piece.

[Naomi · Rating 1 out of 5]

Poorly researched. One chapter covered a subject I wrote my post-graduate dissertation on, and contained numerous factual errors.

[Uffe Jon Ploug · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too much editorializing and almost nonexistent research makes this a poor read. The topic holds promise but should be given to better people with more time and effort put into it.

[Rory Fox · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘Tobacco cures illnesses and enhances wellbeing.’ That’s the kind of headline that could well have been printed a couple of hundred years ago, when tobacco really was viewed as having medicinal qualities. Since then, a deeper understanding has shown such ideas to be wrong.

That is essentially the theme of the book. Ideas blossom, and then gradually fall out of favour as deeper understandings of the issues show them to be problematic, or down right wrong.

Before germs were understood, plagues and contagious illnesses were often attributed to miasmas and bad air. The very word ‘malaria’ comes from attributing a badness (mal) to the air. We can look back now at a theory which seems obviously ridiculous, but in the absence of wider causes it was a natural conclusion to jump from a bad smell to a badness in the air. And then when the badness couldn’t be detected; it was assumed to still be there, albeit undetectably so on some occasions.

We also hear about Nineteenth century drugs. Heroin was considered good for you. So when Sherlock Holmes was depicted as effectively addicted, it was with the knowledge that that would not turn off readers from their hero. Queen Victoria and Pope Leo XIII were probably addicted too, as attitudes to cocaine and Opiates were not sufficiently attuned to understand the risks and dangers that they posed. Even drinks like Coco Cola may have owed their initial attraction to their early use of cocaine linked materials.

The Nazis prompt more than a few examples of bad science. Pseudo hollow earth theories and weird anthropologies. More disturbingly we hear how the number tattooed onto concentration camp victims was actually referencing a number classification system developed by the Nazi IT contractor of choice – IBM.

Phrenology and Mesmerism introduce us to Sciences which became popularist snake oils and confidence tricks. The book notes literally millions of ways of buying magnetic items which are still sold as having some kind of health benefit, despite the fact that no indisputable evidence to support the idea, has arisen in the last two hundred years.

Less impressively, and completely unnecessarily, the book seemed to betray an occasionally sneering attitude towards religion. We heard for example that the Vatican was to blame for pushing stories of tribal cannibalism (Kindle 56%) and it was all due to an avaricious ‘rush to lay claim to the rest of the world’. Really? Cui bono? Was it the Vatican, or was it countries like Spain and Portugal that built up vast colonial empires?

And was it really true that the medieval bible could only be read in Latin, so that ‘any non cleric who peeked inside would be burnt alive’ (57%). If that is so, then how was it that King Alfred the Great (d.899) seems to have translated bits of the bible into Anglo Saxon?

Apart from the book’s arguably prejudicial views about religion, the rest of the book is an interesting and well written catalogue of mistaken scientific perspectives. The book doesn’t aim for completion. For example early twentieth century radiation treatments could have been a whole chapter of misunderstandings and tragedies. Nevertheless, what the book does cover, is generally clear and comprehensive enough for non-expert readers to grasp the contours of the issues.

[T.O. Munro · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up in a charity shop. I am wary - in this current anti=expert climate - of engaging too much with books that trumpet what Science got wrong.

This is however an entertaining read particularly around the matter pf what became the fifth domestic appliance to be electrified after the fan, kettle, sewing machine and pop-up toaster.

In other chapters the book lays bare the stubbornness of stupidity in the way that people continued to believe in something long after it had been proven to be a sham created by frauds for personal advancement. For example subliminal advertising (which I did not know) was a total scam based on fabricated results from a cinema that could not have held the numbers cited in the "research" yet studies today show that 80 of Americans in 2006 still believed in the power of subliminal advertising.

There is a theme of isolated individuals being exposed too late by the scientific community after their lies have run away with the world. Pyschological studies have seen this too - even when shown that a premise Y has been unjustifiably derived from a false and disproven premise X, people are still determined to believe in premise Y - in disappointingly large proportions..

This obduracy of belief in the face of evidence - the "Emperor's new clothes" syndrome if you will, is the most insidious poison in the well of knowledge. We see it with anti-vaxxers, with consipracy theorists, with flat-earthers and with the stubborn adherence to untenable political positions.

This is an entertaining book that has taught me to disbelieve some things (Subliminal advertising) that I had previously - in good faith - accepted.

What is scary is how stubbornly mad ideas can be picked up and run with long after their idiocy or dangers have been amply demonstrated.

[Sue Sims · Rating 1 out of 5]

This could have been an interesting and provocative book, but unfortunately, it's full of huge amounts of lazy and ignorant writing that not only repeats various lies but appears to invent some completely new ones - at least, I couldn't find where they originated. For example, Donald claims that Pope Gregory the Great 'openly proclaimed it to be heresy to denounce the concept of a flat earth': Donald gives no source for this claim, which is probably sensible, since it's nonsense. Almost all western theologians were perfectly happy with the Ptolemaic theory of a spherical earth, though a handful of eastern bishops of the Antiochian school preferred a literal reading of Biblical phrases like 'the four corners of the earth'.

Ironically, considering the author's dislike of anything remotely religious, he has a dogmatic approach to 'science', resulting in what one call a QI approach to facts: anything that's currently believed by ordinary people is almost certainly wrong, and I, the omnipotent author, am going to reveal to you what is REALLY the case. However, he fails to understand that even modern science is frequently inconclusive, and that researchers often disagree with each other. He's very keen, for instance, to explain that the Black Death had nothing to do with rats, a theory which he describes as possessing 'overwhelming evidence': in fact, the evidence is neither overwhelming nor generally accepted, as the historical and medical evidence can be interpreted in many different ways. Here and in many other chapters, the only sources he refers to are those which he agrees with.

Overall, unless you, like me, have Kindle Unlimited, don't bother with this book; and if, like me, you download it using Kindle Unlimited, I recommend that you delete it. It's certainly not worth real money, and not worth the time you'll spend reading it.

[domfucius · Rating 2 out of 5]

Entertaining and digestible.

Contained within is a collection of pseudo-scientific topics. While presented mostly in a humorous tone and context, many of these theories were responsible for the death of millions (or in the case of phrenology and eugenics, the genocide and near destruction of peoples).

The author is quick to dismiss and ridicule many of the theories, deservingly so. The anecdotes, explanations, and excerpts lend themselves well to this format; leading to a high level of digestibility and seemingly light read.

I did find that the author exercised quite a bit of pedantry to bend the narrative to his ideas. On page 20 he writes: "Heat does not rise but disperses itself equally and evenly throughout its environment." As a pedant he is not completely incorrect; while practically he may be quite.

My perception is one of a writer with interest in the sciences and a background in the humanities, writing about science while neglecting to expound. His assertions often needn't explanation as his ridicule and dismissal of pseudo-scientific theories are so obviously warranted. Yet he must be careful and tactful to maintain his repute, avoiding to use whites and blacks to describe greys.

In this short and light format it is difficult to assign so much blame, however. My main gripe being strongly with the placement and timing of the boxed excerpts. These additional pieces of information most often finding themselves in the most awkward and ill suiting of places. It seems as if his draft was written and sent to an editor, with these boxes being subsequently sprinkled throughout without much thought on their impact on the flow of reading.

A good book to read on a rainy day or upon a porcelain seat, but not something you would want to cite in a dissertation.

[figglypudding · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very interesting and at times funny (and even enlightening). I loved how blatantly it went over and called out how dangerous pseudoscience can be in the chapters on eugenics, hollow earth theory, hysteria, etc. But the depth of the research done was questionable, in that it contained more than a few editorial and factual errors (e.g., some incorrect birth and death dates for historic figures; calling Stanford an Ivy League; claiming that the first humans didn’t evolve in Africa, etc.) that made me doubt the credibility of a lot of the claims. Highly ironic, given the topic. And a lot of the “fun non-facts” dispersed throughout the chapters state that a widely believed “fact” is wrong without saying anything as to WHY it’s wrong and what the correct version actually is. Bit pointless, really. Overall, a good surface level read to match the surface level research done.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty fun read if you just want something for fun to read on the side. Some interesting facts about what people used to believe in and what the consequences were for that. I read a previous book from this same author who covered history facts that were wrong and enjoyed it. I wouldn't invest all your reading time into this book though I'd recommend reading a chapter or two a day. I also would suggest to the author to expand a bit on the boxes with science facts that he listed. Like some would expand a bit on the topic of the chapter while others were random facts but didn't have any explanation as to why they were either false or truth.

In all, for $10 I felt the book was worth it.

[Eftihia Alice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found this book a very fun, informative and interesting read. It was worth it simply for the realization of how outrageous us humans have been in the past, or even a few years back, things we believed in & the massive leaps in science we have made today.
However, a lot of scientific facts were presented without any references. Knowing that the book wasn’t meant for solely educational reasons I did not mind that much but some things I read did make me research further & figure out if they were the truth. I guess maybe that would be one of the authors goals to begjn with ?
A great read! I’ve already recommended it to likeminded mates !

[Alicia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Entretenido. No me ha dado nada de confianza lo que me ha contado, aunque algunas cosas me han resultado curiosas. Casi todo está cogido con pinzas para sonar más inteligente. Entre eso y algún comentario antiabortista, me ha puesto bastante nerviosa. Pero bueno, para pasar el rato.

[Erin Gutish · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book quite a bit, it was an easy read but still rather interesting and I feel like I learned a lot. I wish they would have explained the reasoning behind certain things more and cited sources in a more direct manner but I did enjoy the book and would recommend it to others.

[Denna Bee · Rating 4 out of 5]

enjoyable light read. wish the bibliography was more robust

[Judi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oops! Had no intention of reading this right away, flipped through, read a few chapters, read a few more (not in order) then finished it. Fascinating read.

[tyler clark · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting, but not nearly as interesting as I thought. I'm wondering how much of the book is actually factual.

[Dahmani Toumi · Rating 4 out of 5]

it was a wonderful book that talks about variant topics and perfectly analysing some of the most known mysteries of the century

[Timothy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Each topic was short and easy to read, good for general knowledge.

[Margie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A light and easy read with some dunny and interesting tidbits.