I have been browsing this website for the past few weeks and I must say that everything presented here is fascinating. The idea that in this day and age there are people who still hold to the belief that the Earth is flat just floored me, although I suppose if one looks hard enough it is possible to find people who believe just about anything.
I remember when I was in the tenth grade I had an earth science teacher who we all called Mr. Waz. He had a sort of folksy, absent minded professor way about him, which is perhaps why he was one of the most popular teachers in the entire school. He always encouraged us to think outside the box and approach science from a position of brilliance, leaving our egos and biases aside, in order to formulate the most intelligent ideas and present them the best way we possibly could. In his room he had a map of the world hanging on the wall that was "flipped upside down". When one student protested, he challenged her to prove that north is "up", which she of course could not do.
I remember one day in particular he stood in front of the class and confidently proclaimed that Niagra Falls does not exist. We were then split into groups and told to come up with a rebuttal that could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it does in fact exist. As we presented our ideas, we were suddenly overwhelmed by the difficulty of our task. Most students provided personal anecdotes about their experiences in Niagra Falls, which he said he refused to believe. One wise student printed a picture of Niagra Falls, which Mr Waz excused as being a photoshopped image. Others told him that he would need to go there himself and see it, which he refused to do on the grounds that it would be too difficult and expensive (sound familiar yet?). By the end of class, our efforts had been thoroughly frustrated and the point he was making was well established. Nothing can be proven to be true to individuals who close their minds to the reality of their surroundings, which begs the question "how do you prove to a person who is dead-set on believing the Earth is flat that it is actually round?"
Many, if not all of the challenges to FET on this website end up going in one of two directions: either the challengers begin to lose patience and start insulting the FE theorists for their unsubstantiated responses, or the FE theorists dismiss all evidence pointing to a round Earth as being part of a massive global conspiracy.
My point is simple. Even if you took Tom Bishop into a space ship and flew around the world, showing him Antarctica, the moon, and the stars in the heavens, he would find some reason to discredit the evidence presented before him (i.e. "we are clearly in a lab somewhere and this window shows nothing more than a computer projection"). To the flat earthers, conspiracies have no limit.
Now, I am not scientist, nor do I have any degree in a science field. I am, however, an undergraduate student of political science and history, so I am more interested in the societal implications of alternative ideas (lies). The flat earth model relies on an absurd amount of conspiring to discredit the dissenters, when little account is given to the fact that a conspiracy on the scale that these people are talking about would be impossible.
My question is this: of the thousands (perhaps millions) of modern airline pilots, astronauts, meteorologists, politicians, astronomers, Antarctic researchers, ham radio operators, satellite engineers, [added: neutrino physicists, GPS data calibrators], and people trained in celestial navigation, why have none come forward?