When the Earth Was Flat: All the Bits of Science We Got Wrong by Graeme Donald (2012)

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Libraries are awesome, but when you live in Asia and lack access to a good English library, coffee-shop book-swaps are the next best thing. I came across this surprisingly delightful book at a coffee shop in Myanmar, and it’s made me an instant Graeme Donald fan—whoever he is.

A Brief Summary of When the Earth Was Flat

Through the course of 18 highly readable chapters, Donald takes us readers on a crash course through some of history’s most intriguing bits of quackery and bad ideas. And it’s not just the biggies like the titular flat earth (72) or blood-letting (163).

Donald deals with such physical issues as the supposed health benefits of tobacco (43), cocaine (94) and monkey-testicle injections (51). He touches on old racist ideas like phrenology (9) and eugenics (57). And he even attacks a few beliefs some still hold dear, like the existence of a missing link (114), that most African and Polynesian tribes were cannibals (129), and that magnetic homeopathy actually works (163).

I especially enjoyed that latter chapter on magnetism—”Are Bears Polar?: The bodies of animals contain a life energy that can be influenced by external magnetic forces.” This is the concept behind both Chinese qi and homeopathy’s mind-bogglingly ridiculous magnetic water tinctures. A friend once took me to a practitioner who prescribed me some bottles of magnetized water that were supposed to help my heartburn and back pain, drop-by-drop, and he charged her a buttload for them—against all my protestations. Graeme Donald confirmed my natural aversion to such tomfoolery, and I’m grateful.

Alongside his text are many magnificent era-illustrations from old advertisements, medical books, and patents. He also adds boxes of unrelated falsehoods and tidbits which are mostly interesting, though some also have a dark side.

Graeme Donald Best Stop Trying to Debunk Scripture

The dark side is that, in several instances where he lacks the space to qualify his statements, he comes off as stupidly opinionated, not factually accurate. Two instances stand out, and both deal with Scripture.

First, he writes this as an off-the-cuff remark:

Did you know the Number of the Beast was and still remains 616, not 666? Modern translators of the Bible, makers of popular Satanic films and thousands of Goth rockers have been misled. (89)

Is there some minor debate over this issue? Yes, but most people don’t know it, because most scholars don’t accept it! To make such a bold claim without proof is idiotic, I’m sorry. Why couldn’t he have written “might be” instead of “was and still remains”? That language wouldn’t have thrown any flags.

Later in the book, he writes this doozy of a claim about Jesus, which not only defies logic but also goes against so much modern science:

John 19:34 states that from the spear, “came there out blood and water” but, as all fans of popular television forensic series know, corpses do not bleed, no matter how many times they might be lanced. So, far from validating the story of Jesus’ death on the cross, it confirms the reverse: Jesus was alive at the end of the crucifixion, therefore there could have been no resurrection. (161)

The logical fallacy is obscene: even if Jesus were still alive at the point of the spear-thrust (which He wasn’t), that doesn’t mean He remained alive until his resurrection on the third day! Again, completely idiotic.

The medical fallacy is to suggest that corpses don’t bleed…because that one CSI episode said they don’t! Jesus hung on a cross for hours. Gravity was at work. Blood pooled. The pericardial sac was breached. So many things occurred that make this bloody spear-thrust not only plausible but likely.

As I wrote above, Graeme Donald best stop trying to debunk Scripture with his teledramatic opinions. I don’t think these opinions change my trust of the book as a whole, since he does develop his arguments in the lengthier chapters, but they do make me think he should have removed them from later editions, right?

Eugenics and Abortion

I do think it’s important to point out that, for a while at least, I did view Donald as a kindred spirit. While not a Creationist, he does deal with some of the logical fallacies of the Evolutionary Theory. He writes strongly against racism. And in his chapter on Eugenics, he has this to say about abortion—which is so important, I feel I must quote him at length:

If there is one thing that man learns from experience is that man does not learn from experience. Eugenics is dead; long live ‘newgenics’. Recent genetic developments see us yet again standing at the threshold of human perfection. ‘De-selection’ – what a wonderfully innocuous-sounding term. Yet nearly 2,300 abortions of foetuses with mental and physical disabilities were carried out in the UK alone in 2010.

It is all too easy to be seduced down this route. Who will decide who lives and who dies, and who will set the parameters? All who think they are fit for making such decisions should first be made to watch all available footage of Mengele and his like as they dealt with and disposed of those they considered to be genetic trash. Their abhorrent crimes were not committed centuries ago; nor on another planet — Mengele’s experiments were carried out a scant sixty-five years ago on European soil. (71 )

Conclusion

A few chapters in this book deal with sexual issues in an eye-popping and fascinating way, so prudes and youth beware. It’s not overly graphic, but hysteria is bound to make one blush.

Besides that, there’s a host of interesting etymological tidbits throughout the book—particularly for idioms. The chapter on tobacco, for example, helped explain why it can be said of con artists that they’re “blowing smoke up your”—you know what? Never mind.

I know I can’t believe everything I read, but When the Earth Was Flat is Science-for-Dummies at its finest. I look forward to finding more books by Graeme Donald—whoever he is.

©2026 E.T.