Wrong actually, Hampden accused Wallace of cheating and purposely setting up the experiment to give the results of a round earth. That is why "The Bedford Canal swindle detected & exposed" was written. He had absolutely no proof of the claim, and was later imprisoned for libel due to his attempts to defame Wallace.
Nope. After the experiment Hampden and Carpenter walked away claiming that they had won. Wallace reported later that Carpenter had actually jumped for joy upon looking into the telescope, cheering 'Beautiful, Beautiful!'
Pick up Christine Garwood's book.
If I walk away form this thread claiming I have won, does that make RET true then?
That's the thing. Just walking away and
claiming that you ahve won is not sufficient, anybody can do that. However, it seems (and that they agreed with the results - or why would they have claimed cheating is the results didn't agree with them...).
So if the FEers agreed that the data did not support FET (and made the claim that the REers cheated), but them walked away claiming they had won, then they have violated Zetetic philosophy. They had no evidence that the REers had cheated other than the evidence didn't support FET.
Zetetic philosophy (which Rowbotham subscribed to), says not to make any assumptions, and that you must come to all conclusions based form the evidecne.
So:
Without evidence of cheating, the came to the conclusion that the other side cheated. Violation 1.
The evidence that was available agreed with RET and not FET, yet they kept the conclusion that FET was correct. As this conclusion was not supported by the evidence, Violation 2
Now, FET might still be true that the Earth is Flat, and you can still believe it to be true. But based on the results form this, at the time, the FEers, if they were Zetetics, should have agreed that the evidence said that the Earth was Round.
Because the available evidence said that it was.
It is only under the assumption that the Earth is Flat, does the conclusion of Cheating make logical sense. But Zetetic philosophy says that you
can not make assumptions. As a Zetetic, Tom, this should be obvious to you (read page 1 of ENaG).