Joe Hadsall: Flat Earth documentary reveals exactly how people can believe anything

I’ll be honest: I didn’t think I’d be able to make it through “Behind the Curve,” a documentary on Netflix about people who believe the Earth is flat.

I was worried that it would be a 90-minute self-congratulatory session of chiding, mocking and patronizing. “Look at these idiots, guffaw, chortle, hearty laugh.” Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye do all I need of that in 5-minute YouTube videos.

Fortunately, director Daniel J. Clark instead dives into their lives. He offers them incredible access and a wide-open platform, and the subjects respond with a tremendous amount of openness and transparency. While his documentary features comments and responses from actual scientists and engineers, those interviews are sparing. We watch flat-Earthers live by their beliefs. We watch them fail to scientifically prove their theorem, then struggle to explain the results.

That’s outstanding, because it makes “Behind the Curve” valuable and educational. It deals with why a person believes something so fervently, despite observable evidence to the contrary — and understanding that is becoming critical for navigating today’s world.

Not a mockumentary

Released this month on Netflix, “Behind the Curve” follows the lives of several key leaders in today’s current flat-Earth movement.

The most prominent people featured are Mark Sargeant and Patricia Steere, two leading figures in the movement. The documentary shows them sharing interviews and visiting a NASA spaceflight museum before attending an inaugural international flat Earth conference.

Sargent is relatively new to the theory, but thanks to a YouTube series of questions, he believes the idea of a spherical Earth is simply a conspiracy. He believes that the Earth is a flat disk, surrounded by a giant wall of ice at the perimeter (representing Antartica). The world we know is a “Truman Show”-style studio, he argues.

It also follows Bob Knodel and Jaren Campanella, two science-minded believers and members of a group called Globebusters who rig experiments to prove that the Earth is flat. Their experiments generally fail, including one that encompasses the documentary’s final scene.

Those failures are what “get all the press” about Clark’s documentary: A majority of the reviews I see highlight those awkward moments.

I even took part in the mocking at the beginning, when Sargent said flat Earthers are “winning,” because direct observation beats all the math that scientists rely on. He points to Seattle skyscrapers in the background, saying that if the Earth was round, we shouldn’t be able to see them.

“A picture says 1,000 words,” he says, glossing over how the bottoms of those tall buildings are not visible.

“What an idiot,” I thought. I almost stopped watching.

In the very next scene, however, he starts describing what led him toward a flat-Earth belief, and is quite open about it. In comparing flat Earth to the “poop sandwich” of conspiracy theories, he is humorous, well-spoken and articulate.

In scenes with Steere, his mother, at the spaceflight museum and with fans at the conference, he is affable, conversational and likable. He even appears awkward to receive the attention he gets, and expresses a lot of gratitude for the support he receives.

Even while wearing a T-shirt that says, “I am Mark Sargent,” he projects humility.

All the people in “Behind the Curve” are real people. Most are good people. Some are a little vain. One is particularly repugnant, yelling at a NASA employee at a Starbucks and alleging we’re all being tricked into not-Christian sun worship. But they are all real. They believe this.

That’s where “Behind the Curve” is valuable. By showing their lives and their earnestness, it demonstrates the lengths we go to hold on to our beliefs.

When to reach out

The heart of the documentary, to me, is expressed by physicist Lamar Glover. He is featured in the documentary speaking to a gathering of scientists adjacent to the flat Earth conference

“So I want to talk about flat Earthers,” he says. The statement generates some derisive jeers of anticipation from the crowd, akin to watching a video of a comedian about to let a heckler have it.

What he says later is profound, to me:

“The truthers, the flat-Earthers, the anti-vaxxers. When we leave people behind, we leave bright minds to mutate and stagnate. These folks are potential scientists who have gone completely wrong. Their natural inquisitiveness and rejection of norms could be beneficial to science if they were more scientifically literate.”

He goes on: “So flat Earthers shouldn’t be held in contempt, but as a reminder of a scientist who could have been, someone who fell through the cracks. We as ambassadors of science are called to do more.”

Guys, I’m no scientist, but I love science and the scientific method. It hasn’t failed us for more than 2,000 years. Greeks figured out the Earth’s shape at least 300 years before the birth of Jesus. They did that by making observations and following facts.

That method is responsible for both triumphs and tragedies: The same scientific method that led us to vaccines and medicine also led us to nuclear weapons. But overall, no other method of thought helps us better determine what is actually going on around us.

As a journalist, I value facts. What’s great about science is that it doesn’t care about politics. Anti-vaxxers and GMO-opponents on the left share the same rejection of science as global warming deniers and anti-evolutionists on the right. That means it feels good to bank on something that can’t be spun by a political talking point.

So when I see misinformation getting spread on my social networks, I like to correct it.

I’ve probably annoyed or angered many of my friends by doing that. But I can’t help it: I want my friends to have facts. I’m not out to change minds. I don’t want to group my friends into camps that automatically assume their beliefs. I’ll give ‘em information that I trust, and what they do with that information is up to them.

Like Michael Shermer’s outstanding book “Why People Believe Weird Things” (a must-read for any journalist), “Behind the Curve” helps me understand how a person can get hooked by confirmation bias. It shows me what we’re up against when people throw facts out with a simple wave of dismissal, or a muttered “that’s what THEY want you to think.” It shows me that the reasons that someone could be a flat Earth believer are the same reasons that could lead someone to believe anything, from as weird as UFO abductions to as common as economic philosophy.

I want to be absolutely clear: Anti-science thinking is not good for humanity. Our earth is becoming inhospitable thanks to climate change. Mumps and measles are making a comeback thanks to anti-vaccination believers. Like Mark Sargent, the people who believe in those anti-science conspiracy theories may be likable, but they believe in dangerous ideas that lead to actual harm.

In our personal lives and in society, “Behind the Curve” shows exactly how someone arrives at those beliefs, and further demonstrates when to reach out, and when to cut them off.

Joe Hadsall is web editor for the Globe. Contact him at jhadsall@joplinglobe.com.