Please read the story of the Old Bedford Level experiment properly.

You are cherry picking and overlooking the fact that Samuel Rowbotham's experiment was successfully debunked by Alfred Wallace and again by Henry Oldham in 1901.

If you read the story correctly, you'll see that the court did NOT award the money to be returned due to the results of the experiment at all (to John Hampden by the way).

The court ruled that the wager had been invalid because Hampden retracted the bet.

Alfred Wallace's demonstration actually showed a curvature consistent with a spherical Earth.

The most worrying part of the story is that when rational though failed, Hampden resulted to making death threats towards Wallace.

“You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.” ~ Daniel Patrick Moynihan