Meanwhile, according to Professor Pierre, from UCLA, Flat-Earthers and similar conspiracy theorists might want to talk about spirit levels and similar things, “taking advantage of the fact that people might not be familiar with that obscure piece of experimentation at the expense of talking about how wildly improbable it is that every single country with a space program, its government, and its scientists could possibly collude to hide the truth about a flat earth, not even addressing the ‘why.’

Pierre revealed that his initial interest in Flat-Earthers started after basketball player Kyrie Irving made some comments about the Earth being flat a few years back. “It seemed clear that, when his feet were held to the fire, that he backed off of actually endorsing Flat Earth beliefs and was instead using it as a way of articulating a kind of generalized mistrust in conventional dogma that’s become very common these days.”

The Professor continued: “The same has been shown in recent surveys of QAnon believers—few actually believe the more fringe elements, whereas many do endorse sympathy with the spirit of it. I sometimes liken this to distinguishing between Bible literalists and ‘true believers’ and those that embrace the Bible in a more metaphorical way. Unfortunately, surveys that query different degrees of belief conviction often fail to capture the details of individual belief, giving us a false impression of just how many believers are out there.”