In recent weeks I have been perturbed by two recent stories about the lack of rationality in human life. One of my passions is science and the scientific process, by which theorems are proven by the ability to observe, test, refine share and, most importantly, reproduce an outcome. That is how, in simple terms, we are able to manufacture, understand how to manage electricity and why penicillin works and homoeopathy does not.

It is also how we’ve been able to go to the moon and more importantly, come back. It is how we’ve been able to have the NASA Rovers trundle around Mars and send back some of the most wonderful Martian images imaginable and how we’ve been able, since 1977, to track the Voyager One and Voyager Two satellites as they continue to send back information from the outer reaches of our Solar System. Voyager one is currently 141.348 AUs from Earth. An AU is an “Astronomical Unit” where one AU is the average distance between the Earth and our Sun, roughly 93 million miles or 150 million kilometres.

However, in recent weeks and months there has been a resurrection of stories about The Flat Earth International Conference in Raleigh, America and their belief that, despite all of the evidence to the contrary, the Earth is flat. In recent days, Elon Musk, the South African creator of PayPal and advocate of Hyperloop, SpaceX and Tesla, was set straight by the august body of flat Earthers that Mars had been observed to be round, but the Earth had not.

If one can not be swayed by the words and thoughts of Musk, perhaps Neil deGrasse Tyson, whose list of achievements and awards are too numerous to list, but can be précised here was, earlier this year, engaged in an online debate, if debate can be the correct word, with somebody called Bob, an American “musical artist”. Bob, whose loving parents originally named him Robert Simmons, has, again through the medium of Twitter, advocated that “Once you go flat, you never go back”, amongst other things. Tyson responded to Simmons, saying at the time, “Flat Earth is a problem only when people in charge think that way. No law stops you from regressively basking in it.”. There was no immediate response from Simmons. Too many syllables perhaps? Or maybe Simmons was thinking of a syllabub.

But all of this came to head last week when the Guardian ran the story with the headline “Self-taught rocket scientist plans launch to test flat Earth theory “. I suppose one should be applauded for setting out to test and, I assume, publish the methodology and results to allow others to repeat the testing. However, my hopes were dashed when I read that Mad Mike, for that is the pilots nom de plume, said “I don’t believe in science. I know about aerodynamics and fluid dynamics and how things move through the air. But that’s not science, that’s just a formula.” The full article, should one wish, can be read at the Guardians California section.

Flat Earth theory has seen a resurgence in recent years, fuelled by online message boards and some high profile endorsements from minor Twitter celebrities. The Flat Earth Society, founded in 1956 and relaunched online in the 2000s, currently boasts of having over 500 members, ironically around the globe.

The Flat Earth chuckle does seem to be an almost entirely American endeavour. Surely such irrationally minded nonsense could not take hold here in Europe? Nor, even less likely, the birth place of the Industrial Revolution, England. The country that gave the world the first trains, the pneumatic tyre, penicillin, television, the seed drill, the Marine Chronometer, the graphite pencil, shorthand, the Difference Engine, the Steam Engine, Mauveine, the Hover Craft and the fizzy drink.

Water divining, or dowsing, it is claimed is a method of finding under ground water by holding two sticks and walking around. When the sticks converge, there is water underneath.

Does it work? No, of course not. If it did most of the issues that afflict parts of Africa with drought would be resolved. Two sticks, a spade and a shovel and water. What would be easier?

However, this did not stop the story emerging last week that “Scientist finds UK water companies use ‘magic’ to find leaks“. And indeed, it seems that eight separate water companies, the companies that are responsible for the delivery of water to the home, admitted that their engineers do indeed using dowsing rods, or divining sticks to find water leaks. The truth is, that their engineers may indeed hold a couple of metal rods, or a little piece of birch tree, but, the success rate of these artefacts is exactly the same as flipping a coin. And given that they know the leak is between point A and point B it is still a little disappointing that they do have low success rates at finding leaks.

Is this a failing in the eduction system for not teaching science and the scientific methodology correctly, is this a failure of the political classes to ensure that myths and folklore have no part in the industrial future or is more a case of a slightly obscure English sense of humour that finds the strange practices of yesteryear ever so slightly heart warming and reminds us all of time when, things were just better back then….. ?

Incidentally, water diving works on exactly the same principle as how the ouija board doesn’t work; the ideomotor effect.