William A. Wilson published this article on FirstThings.com, in which he lays out the inherent flaws to confirmation bias, the desire to publish science which correlates with results, and the inherent fraudulent characteristics this engenders.

"Older scientists contribute to the propagation of scientific fields in ways that go beyond educating and mentoring a new generation. In many fields, it’s common for an established and respected researcher to serve as “senior author” on a bright young star’s first few publications, lending his prestige and credibility to the result, and signaling to reviewers that he stands behind it. In the natural sciences and medicine, senior scientists are frequently the controllers of laboratory resources—which these days include not just scientific instruments, but dedicated staffs of grant proposal writers and regulatory compliance experts—without which a young scientist has no hope of accomplishing significant research. Older scientists control access to scientific prestige by serving on the editorial boards of major journals and on university tenure-review committees. Finally, the government bodies that award the vast majority of scientific funding are either staffed or advised by distinguished practitioners in the field."

"The hagiographies of science are full of paeans to the self-correcting, self-healing nature of the enterprise. But if raw results are so often false, the filtering mechanisms so ineffective, and the self-correcting mechanisms so compromised and slow, then science’s approach to truth may not even be monotonic. That is, past theories, now “refuted” by evidence and replaced with new approaches, may be closer to the truth than what we think now."

Wilson points out that the two most prominent findings in recent years with respect to hard scientific studies, ,have both been recanted.

"Two of the most vaunted physics results of the past few years—the announced discovery of both cosmic inflation and gravitational waves at the BICEP2 experiment in Antarctica, and the supposed discovery of superluminal neutrinos at the Swiss-Italian border--have now been retracted, with far less fanfare than when they were first published."

Finally, Williams aims his critique at the Cult of Science, likens it to a religion, and pinpoints both Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye as popularizers whom have conducted little to no research on their own. 

"If science was unprepared for the influx of careerists, it was even less prepared for the blossoming of the Cult of Science. The Cult is related to the phenomenon described as “scientism”; both have a tendency to treat the body of scientific knowledge as a holy book or an a-religious revelation that offers simple and decisive resolutions to deep questions. But it adds to this a pinch of glib frivolity and a dash of unembarrassed ignorance. Its rhetorical tics include a forced enthusiasm (a search on Twitter for the hashtag “#sciencedancing” speaks volumes) and a penchant for profanity. Here in Silicon Valley, one can scarcely go a day without seeing a t-shirt reading “Science: It works, b—es!” The hero of the recent popular movie The Martian boasts that he will “science the sh— out of” a situation. One of the largest groups on Facebook is titled “I f—ing love Science!” (a name which, combined with the group’s penchant for posting scarcely any actual scientific material but a lot of pictures of natural phenomena, has prompted more than one actual scientist of my acquaintance to mutter under her breath, “What you truly love is pictures”). Some of the Cult’s leaders like to play dress-up as scientists—Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson are two particularly prominent examples— but hardly any of them have contributed any research results of note. Rather, Cult leadership trends heavily in the direction of educators, popularizers, and journalists."

"When cultural trends attempt to render science a sort of religion-less clericalism, scientists are apt to forget that they are made of the same crooked timber as the rest of humanity and will necessarily imperil the work that they do. The greatest friends of the Cult of Science are the worst enemies of science’s actual practice."

William A. Wilson is a software engineer in the San Francisco Bay Area.

A Flat Earth Thesis has allegedly been underway since 2011 from the University of Sfax, however it appears to be fabricated, a "shell paper" created to generate a litany of public ignominy rooted in perpetuating Scientism as oppositional to Flat Earth Thinking across Academia, Science, and Religion. 

The student is named as Amira Kharroubi, she has a paper thin LinkedIn Page, which basically only cites one area of study: geology, and that she'd been a studying at The University of Sfax since 2011, and 13 posts on Facebook since 2009 (for some reason you have to be logged in to view). I sent her a message asking if she were the student whom authored the paper but have not heard a reply.

The advisor's name is, Jamel Touir, he is the former Director of the Constitution Assembly of Tunisia, (the group that helped re-write the Constitution in Tunisia back in 2011), he claimed his student's Constitutional right to explore the idea, and defended her by saying it was only a "rough draft". Despite the Professor's point that the paper has not yet gone under review, he co-authored this 6 page "preliminary results" version which purports to have been published back in August of 2016 (Volume 4, Issue 8) in The Journal of Science and Technoledge, but which was only uploaded 3 weeks ago, on yumpoo.com, at the start of this whole shit storm. As of today, April 30th, 2017, it as 7773 views. ​(Click image to keep reading.)

A startling portrayal of the current "global" consciousness, in a throwback scene from the late 1800's in a remake of Jules Verne's classical novel, Around the World in 80 Days. 

Bill Nye, the poster boy for the recent "Science March" which took place today, on earth day, co-authors an article entitled, "How to Shut Down Flat Earthers, According to Bill Nye". This is gonna be delicious.

The NYT is billing the march for Science as an Anti-Trump Rally.