Robotham made his infamous observations along a CANAL, a man-made waterway, so of course it was wrong.
oh, and he also used the Pythagrean Theorem for his calculations, which relates to TRIANGLES, not CIRCLES or SPHERES!
"In science, the burden of proof falls upon the claimant; and the more extraordinary a claim, the heavier is the burden of proof demanded. The true skeptic takes an agnostic position, one that says the claim is not proved rather than disproved. He asserts that the claimant has not borne the burden of proof and that science must continue to build its cognitive map of reality without incorporating the extraordinary claim as a new "fact." Since the true skeptic does not assert a claim, he has no burden to prove anything. He just goes on using the established theories of "conventional science" as usual. But if a critic asserts that there is evidence for disproof, that he has a negative hypothesis—saying, for instance, that a seeming psi result was actually due to an artifact—he is making a claim and therefore also has to bear a burden of proof."
that's what "Zetetic" means. but you've forgotten: YOU FERS are the ones making the "extraordinary claim", so the burden of proof is on YOU!!
one more thing: YOUR intuition may tell YOU earth is flat, but MY intuition tells ME earth is round!