when "When Prophecy Fails", fails.
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"In 1954, Dorothy Martin predicted an apocalyptic flood and promised her followers rescue by flying saucers. When neither arrived, she recanted, her group dissolved, and efforts to proselytize ceased."
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jhbs.70043
When Prophecy Fails (1956), the now-canonical account of the event, claimed the opposite: that the group doubled down [or did huge reinterpretations]
Drawing on newly unsealed archival material, this article demonstrates that the book's central claims are false, and that the authors knew they were false...the group...quickly abandoned their beliefs afterward [& the 1956 book is a series of] serious ethical violations by the researchers
Another key piece of atheist social science, blows up.
When people are in "cognitive dissonance" about their mistakes: they may rationalize for awhile, but when it gets undeniable, people do see & move on. People abandon fakes. People don't show loyalty unless something was intensely helpful & real to them, over time.
Atheist social scientists liked to cite this 1956 book, to discredit religions & especially Christianity. But the book, and the biases of atheist social science, are discredited.
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