Social media is full of idiots. Doesn’t matter what topic you’re following -astronomy, koala bears, aliens or cross-dressing nuns – someone has a stupid fringe opinion that they’re going to try to ram down your throat.
In a moment of rashness a few years back, I joined some Facebook geology groups. Learning Geology Community (53k members), Geology and Geologists (123k members), and Fossils Rocks & Minerals (27k members). I wanted to spread the word to all those lucky people about my blog (ha, ha, good plan), and maybe mentor a few newbie geologists. Thanks for the help Uncle Ralph!
It didn’t take long before I was filtering out posts from lazy students trying to get their homework done for free, and lots of “please tell me what is value?” posts with fuzzy photos of grubby little grey chunks they found in a field and think is a meteorite and not a grubby little grey chunk.
And I wasn’t the only one hoping to educate the masses. Pseudoscience posts soon started appearing in my feed; so-called geologists lurking on the dodgy fringes of our fair science, pushing an alternate version of geological reality. Flat-earthers, creationists, climate change deniers- it’s a long list- but one flavour pops up far too often for my liking.
No it’s not expanding
The most persistent offenders are the expanding earth proponents; sad anoraks who’ve dedicated their lives to the long-dead theory that our planet is inflating like a balloon and that plate tectonics is load of old bollocks. I’m so used to them popping up that I miss them if I don’t hear from them for a few weeks. They’re always in bad mood because nobody takes them seriously (except other expansion supporters), and they quickly resort to all-caps shouting if you dare challenge their daft opinion.
Our theory is growing
Expansion “theory”, such as it is, says that the shape, position and perceived movement of the continents is due to the volume of the Earth increasing and not active plate tectonics. Somehow, it’s growing (mechanism unknown), inflating like a balloon, and has been for billions of years. This explains why, on the face of it, the continents appear to fit together if you shuffle them around a bit, because apparently the “fit” still needs explaining (Hint. It doesn’t). They argue that it’s inconceivable that the continents can “float” on the mantle, but -apparently- it’s totally conceivable that the earth can expand.
The problem of course is that decades of scientific research have consigned expansion to the steaming midden heap of scientific has-beens where old ideas are left to rot. And to make matters worse for our antagonists, GPS satellite data has confirmed that it doesn’t happen.
So, I get very ticked off when they appear because young students, lacking the perspective that experience brings, may believe that it’s a simple solution to the question of why the continents fit together. The earth is expanding! Fuck, It’s obvious. But it’s demonstrably wrong and will steer them down career dead ends if they rely on it for their geological world view.
I’m not going to get into debating expansionist pseudoscience in this post; there are many articles out there on the internet that dismantle it more eloquently than I could ever do. And as the old saying goes, if you argue with an idiot then there are two of them. Instead, I want to look at the common tricks they use to push their dogma: the deflections, omissions and gotchas that they use to try to get one over on poor, deluded realio-trulio scientists like me.
Talk to the hand.
The easiest deflection is to avoid answering any serious questions. They lob out the childish “Well if you can’t see it, I’m not going to tell you!” retort if you ask hard questions. They want to make us feel inferior in the face of their brain-busting grasp of the big picture.
“I don’t need to explain anything to you, dullard, because I’m busy reinventing the science while you gorge on Big Academia’s effluent.”
One poster keeps pushing a bizarre “symmetry of the globe” idea; adamant that they’ve spotted global scale symmetry -whatever that is- on satellite photos of the earth, proving it’s expanding. They stick pictures on FB, often stitched together with chunks of continents missing (like most of Asia, see below), decorated with huge red arcs and white zig zag lines that show the supposed symmetry. But ask them how the join-the-dots proves that the earth is expanding, and the condescension starts. This is a cut and paste of actual arguments he/she/they used on me.
Me. “How do your coloured lines prove the earth is expanding? And why is most of Asia missing?”
They. “How can plate tectonics explain the symmetry in this picture? (i.e. the thick curved lines they scrawled on the photo) Huh? Well? Eh? And I don’t need Asia”
Me. “There is no symmetry. What fucking symmetry? By the way, where is Asia?”
They: “It’s so obvious. Look at the symmetry. How do subduction zones explain that Einstein?”
Me: “What’s obvious is you’ve removed Asia to make your symmetry work. Why is Alaska next to the Caspian Sea?”
They: “I don’t need Asia. Look at the symme..”
Me: “Yes, yes..shut the fuck up about symmetry. It’s so obvious that only you can see it. By the way, can you put Asia back please?”
It’s them. They’re keeping you in the dark because… because…
The classic. Yes, it’s them. Whoever them is. We’re all slaves to a false academic reality forced on us by… by… the entire academic earth science community, and if only we opened our eyes all would become clear. All those experts around the world missed something that the expansionists were able to find online between googling for porn and liking the latest conspiracy theory about George Soros on Twitter.
The expansionists -like all science deniers- unsubtly conflate mainstream university-type scientific knowledge with a flexing of controlling power by the establishment over free thinkers. The engineers of this massive con are so deep into it that they can’t change course without ruining geology as a science. But follow expansion -help them expose the tyranny- and you’ll finally see the light and be saved. The objective, as one writer puts it (see link below) is to separate knowledge from scientific institutions. Once you’ve done that, you can push any old tripe and call it research.
“Those in power control what is considered to be correct and incorrect knowledge.”
Big Geo is watching you
So somewhere there’s a big conspiracy, organised by evil academic figures, that have a vested interest in pushing plate tectonics at the expense of competing theories, and they actively supress everything else to keep us compliant. Of course! What an idiot I’ve been.
Some deniers point to shadowy economic “interests” that are keeping geo-mushrooms like me in the dark, nasty basement of science. This twisted argument makes slightly more sense from an anti-vaxxer perspective -big pharma maintaining profits- but it still implies a ridiculously large scale of complicity and involvement by thousands of people, none of whom ever ‘fess up to being part of it. Which is a bit weird as you’d think someone would spill the beans to the Sun newspaper for a quick million quid.
Quite why they’re doing all this escapes me. They don’t want the apple cart of grants upset, perhaps? It’s at the behest of “globalists”? God knows.
I have a guru
Fringe-science believers engage in more concentrated hero worship than is healthy for an adult. When they want to legitimise their “theory”, they’re more than happy to quote someone who gained a PhD from a mainstream university, someone who’s world view underpins their fantasy.
The modern-day guru pushing expansionism is an Ozzie geologist who I won’t name -ah fuck it, yes I will, James Maxlow- who pops up on FB from time to time to lend support to his fanboys and girls who post on expansion. His earnest followers, both of them, write breathlessly that he’s got a PhD from a reputable Australian university and -wait for it- he’s published “research”. But hold on, I thought academia was a massive fraudulent cover up? So, which is it? Yes, or no?
Regardless, the support of a single individual with a genuine qualification does not invalidate the backbone of our science no matter how much they’d like that to be true.
Our idea deserves equal prominence to yours so people can decide themselves
Actually no it doesn’t, and the same goes for creationists and intelligent design proponents who argue their religious dogma should be taught alongside the genuine science of evolution. Once upon a time, perhaps. If expansion had withstood the assault of decades of scientific enquiry then sure, I’d push for it to be taught alongside plate tectonics. But it hasn’t, no matter what Dr Guru might tell you to sell his latest book.
We have no obligation to teach expansionism alongside real geology -other than as a history-of-science curiosity. If it was a model that could predict all the features we see on the planet half as well as plate tectonics does, then I’d say yes, you’re right, let’s examine it. But it doesn’t. In my profession of economic geology, the setting of most types of mineral and hydrocarbon deposits is accurately predicted by one or more aspects of plate tectonic theory; expansionism can’t offer the same level of prediction.
Plate tectonics is only a theory
Yawn. That tired old argument. Evolution is “only” a theory -a word that implies it’s not established fact. Ta da. Gotcha. Not quite. In common with every other branch of science, geologists use the term “theory” as an antonym to intellectual uncertainty.
“A theory not only explains known facts; it also allows scientists to make predictions of what they should observe if a theory is true. Scientific theories are testable. New evidence should be compatible with a theory. If it isn’t, the theory is refined or rejected. The longer the central elements of a theory hold—the more observations it predicts, the more tests it passes, the more facts it explains—the stronger the theory.”
https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/darwin/evolution-today/what-is-a-theory
Gravity is just a theory too until you fall over and smack your head at which point it becomes a nasty painful fact. Evolution is fact. Tectonics is (are?) fact. And both are supported by whole libraries of incredible research. So, take your etymological gotcha and shove it. Plate tectonics is a predictive, factual and elegant framework for global geology. Expansionism isn’t.
Let’s pick cherries
Cherry picking facts is a well-established technique to make it appear that science supports a certain preferred idea (generally false ones). Otherwise known as the “fallacy of incomplete evidence” some do it by mistake – a subconscious bias applied while looking for data. Not the expansionists though. They ignore what’s inconvenient and focus on a few key points arguing that’s all they need to prove expansion, for example the parallel magnetic “stripes” on the oceanic crust.
Mr. Symmetry, discussed above, relies on a different flavour of cherry picking known as the “fallacy of anecdotal evidence“; deliberately ignoring copious amounts of real data in favor of “facts” they claim to have deduced empirically themselves.
When presented with deliberate cherry picking of the kind expansionists use, remember that it’s fundamentally dishonest and may mislead non-scientists. Point out to the offenders that they are violating a key principle of science -the principle of total evidence– which says that, “when assessing the probability that a certain hypothesis is true, we must take into account all the available information.” Challenge the buggers. Ask them outright if they are honestly taking all evidence into account. See what they say.
“Expansionism could survive after the introduction of plate tectonics because its proponents have increasingly detached their theory from reality by systematically rejecting or overlooking any contrary evidence, and selectively picking only the data that support expansion.”
And finally… there’s science & then there’s fantasy
Yes, I know I said I wouldn’t argue facts but…
All of the expansionist waffle falls apart when they’re asked to explain the mechanism that’s driving the inflation of our fair planet. Desperate to explain where the huge volume of new stuff is coming from, they’ve come up with some ingenious ideas, none of which make logical sense in the face of real science.
- Plasma, formed by the solar wind when it interacts with the earth’s magnetic field penetrates the earth and somehow creates matter in the core, expanding the earth. Here’s a link to a Dr. Maxlow discussing the solar wind theory. It goes a bit haywire about seventeen and a half minutes in when he discusses the solar wind idea and the question time at the end is a marvel of poor moderation. In a different video he admits that he can’t really come up with a rational argument for how expansion happens. Hint of an own goal there perhaps. And I quote from one post: “Finally, mass increase doesn’t come from accretion, it most likely comes from the protons from the sun entering the poles and combining with free electrons to cause a gain in mass in the D layer of the earth.”
- Over time there’s been a huge phase change in the core of the earth which has re-crystallized. A dense mineral has re-organized itself into a less dense one, possibly as the earth has cooled, expanding, and pushing out the crust.
- Mystery dark matter from space is being added to the earth’s core making it grow, kinda like the sun plasma idea.
- All the meteorites and cosmic dust that hit the earth daily are somehow beefing up the humble sphere we live on, right under our feet, without us noticing the growing piles of stardust and smouldering chunks of nickel-iron. That’s a shit ton of dust needed.
- Let’s revisit quantum science! One Italian proponent is (apparently) about to publish a complete revision of gravitational physics without using pesky old mathematics. The basic argument seems to be that the gravitational constant isn’t fixed, but changed with time, removing the slight problem of how the earth’s gravity at the surface hasn’t changed as the earth expanded.
That’s it, I’m done
Anyways, the rant is nearly over.
Science works. We MUST advocate for it whenever specious tripe is promoted as serious science. The body of knowledge geologists rely on is the result of thousands of combined years of detailed research, careful observation and critical debate in journals and at universities and in industry. It’s led to an elegant theory of continental and oceanic crustal growth, plate destruction and movement, all driven by a logical mechanism. Ignoring revisionists and deniers isn’t an option. Their pseudo science has to be countered with facts, and the dogma-based “gotcha” arguments they use dismantled leaving the bastards spluttering and cursing on the side lines where they belong.
And Remember
My puny subscriber base, just like the earth, is refusing to expand. If you found this ill thought out rant even remotely interesting and if you haven’t yet subscribed -shame on you- I’ve placed a handy subscription box near the top of this page which will slowly drift away as time passes. So subscribe now.
Yes Ralph, but. The real reason it is expanding is because of Gaia. Mother earth breathes in and out (just like your chest when someone does CPR in time to the BeeGees “,stayin alive”)
Nowadays she has reverted to holding her breath and trying to get rid of the irritants on her skin (humans) and much like a dog with fleas or a bear with an itch is scratching hard – hence the earthquakes !