Michael Toon wants his Flat Earth Gravity Challenge contestants to waltz into a methodological boondoggle so that he can reject any data that does not subscribe to the unscientific methodologies and pseudo-scientific technologies that he subscribes to. For this reason, Michael Toon amounts to yet another uninformed and biased Scientism Priest who waggishly struts around like a leather queen, pontificating The Gospel of Scientism from his pulpit, complete with NASA play-toy rocket in the background. He’ll dance around any real scientific data and do mental back handsprings like a court jester, brandishing his copy of, Lee McIntyre’s juvenile, How to Talk to a Science Denier, in one hand, and random abstracts from the gatekeepers of peer-review in the other. This is what happens when myopic science flunkies get a You Tube Channel…and it ain’t good.

In brief, Michael Toon’s entire Flat Earth Gravity Challenge contest is a desperately biased attempt at railroading the contestant into the forgone conclusion that Gravity is measured by Gravimeter readings. It is a Scientism snare set for the unsuspecting participant. Toon’s research contingencies are methodologically biased, incomplete, and only applicable if you already assume Gravity exists, and that testing for Gravity with Gravimeters is a viable means of confirming Gravity’s existence, which after researching Gravimetry, and it’s internal inconsistencies, interpolative assumptions, and interpretive inaccuracies, one can scarcely believe.

Gravimetry is a study in Measurement Interpretation Bias and Experimental Confirmation Bias since regardless of what vibrations or movements Gravimeters measure, those who read the measurements will simply label the reading as a confirmation of Gravity because that is what they are testing for. If they were testing for electromagnetism, then they would catalogue their readings as confirmation of electromagnetism, etc… Measurement Interpretation Bias and Experimental Confirmation Bias is a huge problem amongst those studying Gravity because the epistemological stakes are so high for Gravity Fan Boys to demonstrate that Gravity exists, that they get sloppy in their analysis and refuse to adequately and properly consider any other causal antecedents to their test results other than mythical, invisible Gravity.

Lastly, an Argument from Authority (argumentum ab auctoritate), also called an Appeal to Authority, or argumentum ad verecundiam, is a form of argument in which the opinion of an authority on a topic is used as evidence to support an argument. Some consider that it is used in a cogent form if all sides of a discussion agree on the reliability of the authority in the given context, and others consider it to always be a fallacy to cite the views of an authority on the discussed topic as a means of supporting an argument. With Michael Toon, as well as similarly philosophically unskilled thinkers as Toon, there is the tendency to make grandiose appeals to authority as if to say. See, I agree with these guys over there, and I think they are super smart, and so I am right!

The logical fallacy of the Appeal to Authority is rampant right now. Everywhere you look online they have tried to redefine this term to mean Legitimate Authority, Qualified Authority, and of course, the magical appeal to Peer-Reviewed Authority, as if a person’s word can prove something true as long as he has enough letters after his name or degrees behind him, as allotted by epistemological cartels anchored in the preachings of The Royal Society of London.