"Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing."
T.H. Huxley
This is untrue. Simply, there are people who claim this, and others who believe it without checking, and it becomes a dogma.
In reality, there were plethoras of demonstrations.
Before going to study the crop circles in England in the summer of 1990 (VECA 90 - Study Trips of the English Circles), a group of ufologists from the French CNEGU ufology group decided to create their own crop circle, with the objective to get some knowledge on the methods and the nature of human manufacture traces that they can expect to find in visiting the so-called "true crop circles".
At that time, the people who create these formations were not yet known. They called upon a specialist in movie special effects, who then according to their report, managed to create a nicely done quintuplet, by day and in the presence of an official clerk who recorded the fact.
Obviously, the demonstration hardly had any effect on French proponents of a crop circle mystery. What happened is simple to understand: in the two or three years followed, crop circle makers - human - made enormous progress. In 1991, some confessed their activity, the method to make the formations was shown, and there was a true explosion of fake formations rivaling in complexity. Proponents then simply said that crop circle done for VECA was not as sophisticated as the "true" crop circles...
And French "believers" went no further, without ever mentioning any following demonstrations, simply repeating that the VECA French skeptics in 1990 is the only attempt at making a hoaxed crop circle and that the attempt failed since "true crops circles" are much more complex. (This sorry intellectual swindle on the question of the complexity of the crop circles will be discussed deeper in a forthcoming article).
See:
Becky Long and Larry Johnson are members of a skeptic group in Georgia, USA. Becky Long was also a member of the MUFON ufology group.
On August 17, 1991, three weeks before the confession by Bower and Chorley (see further), they created in 30 minutes three circles from 24 to 48 feet in diameter aligned with a radio tower in a hay field near Inman Park in Atlanta, and then informed the local media and local Press, and called the local MUFON chapter hotline.
They had videotaped the entire process and taken close-up photographs of their work. Long said: "Every type of grain we walked on bent and didn't break. I can't imagine why everyone thinks it's so remarkable that the crop circle grain is bent and not broken!"
The Press and media did not even come to see the formation. MUFON people did not respond either, and I guess they did not really believe that crop circles are made by aliens anyway.
Source:
"They called us 'superior intelligence'"
David Chorley, crop circle maker, 1991
I guess everybody knows about the two aged englishmen David Chorley and Doug Bower that came forward in 1991 and said they have done crop circles in the UK for the past 13 years.
Maybe it is less known that both of them were amateur painters, ie, people who know how to draw nicely and know geometry.
It was Doug Bower that first learned how to do the circles. Years ago, he live in Queensland, Australia. People there knew of a strange effect of a UFO landing that made a circular damage in the waterplants of a pond at Tully. It had nothing to do with crop circles; however, people in Queensland had started to make circles in the crop fields as a joke, to say, "look there, a saucer landed." Bower imported the idea in the UK when he moved there. They started to make such circles in 1975, and more and more other people understood how easy it was and did the same, it then spread in the entire world, starting with the USA and Canada.
Chorley and Bower decided to confess because they were disgusted that so many people made money selling books about the circles. So, just before the United Kingdom Corn Circle Conference in Glastonbury, they decided to confess, and make some money too, obviously. Every body was making money except them!
But also, they had started when were in their fifties, in full health. Now more than sixty, although still in good shape, they knew very well that they would not stay fit for 10 more years by working in the fields at night! And the other pranksters, younger, pu a hard competition on them by starting to make more complex formations than theirs... It was time to speak!
With the help of London tabloid "Today", they demonstrated their craft in front of TV cameras to reporters gathered in a field in Hampshire, England. The tabloid then announced the discovery and invited crop circle expert Pat Delgado who had written books and articles saying that crop circles are an unsolved mystery and something men could not do, to analyze this crop circle and tell if it is genuine or not.
Pat Delgado came and said it was a genuine crop circle. In the presence of the reporters, he said: "No human being could have done this. These crops are laid down in these sensational patterns by an energy that remains unexplained and is of a high level of intelligence."
Only then, the "Today" journalists introduced Doug Bower and David Chorley to Delgado, who admitted: "We have been conned. This is a dirty trick. Thousands of lives are going to be wrecked over this."
Colin Andrews wrote: "The reporter had apparently asked Pat to go and have a look at a new crop circle which had just arrived in a field not too far from his house. Pat went there, and he dowsed it and was duly impressed. Apparently, a helicopter was hovering nearby, filming, and when the reporter allowed him to see the circle that Doug and Dave had constructed, those two men appeared from behind the bushes. And Pat was totally devastated. Doug and Dave, along with the Today newspaper, had set him up."
But not long after, Delgado and other experts denied that crop circle are hoaxed, and started to accuse the hoaxers of being "disinformation agents" from the CIA or whatever.
They said this because there were circles in Canada and other countries too. Bower and Chorley tried to explain to them that they do not claim to have done all the crop circles all around the world, that these other crop circles were done by other pranksters that they inspired since 1975, but crop circles proponents did not listen and spent the next years telling people the blatant lie that Bower and Chorley had claimed to have done all the circles in the entire world.
Now, more than 30 years after the first crop circles by Chorley and Bower, more than 20 years after their demonstration, the so-called "experts" who have not abandoned the field are still taking advantage of the public amnesia and tell you over and over the lie that "no demonstration" was ever made.
But it was. Bower and Chorley did a demonstration immediately, and it fooled the expert. He said it was a "genuine" circle. It was not!
Sources:
On July 28, 1999, the CircleMakers made the "3D Cube" crop circle in Avebury in England, commissioned by the Daily Mail who wanted once again to show how the "experts" who claim to distinguish "true" and "hoaxed" crop circles are easy to fool.
On August 3, 2005, the land artists of the well-known group "CircleMakers" announced on their website that their members Rod Dickinson, John Lundberg, and Wil Russell were going to create a 200 ft formation of sixteen overlapping rings in the next 48 hours somewhere in England.
To prevent the gullible believers to claim that they would just pick up a crop circle made by aliens or paranormal forces and later claim it's their own, they published the plan of the formation they were going to make:
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Because Crop circles "believers" had said that demonstrations were all made in daylight and claimed it would be impossible to do it in the night, they decided to make it during the night, without any artificial lighting. They estimated that they would need 3 hours.
They did it.
The construction was filmed by a Channel 4 TV crew using infrared cameras. The site was then opened to the public to visit.
The filming of the construction, made on August 5, 2000, at the Farm World attraction in Erddig near Wrexham was then shown on Channel 4 in October 2000.
You would think that this demonstration was admitted by believers and "experts" as clear evidence that land artists can make the crop circles.
But it was not. They simply ignored it.
When I wondered what believers say about this demo, I found nothing. Except this:
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( www.cropcircles.it/cropcircles2002/ukversion/crop/2000/leformazionidel2000_uk.htm )
An Italian crop circle website that included it in their catalog.
The same group made many other crop formations publicly since. Just see this one:
http://www.circlemakers.org/htv.html (At night for HTV west TV channel in 2001)
... and visit their website at www.circlemakers.org
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John Lundahl and a friend in a reconstitution shown in 2005 on French TV. |
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"Joe Nickell is considered as a authority on crop circles by the scientific community."
"Skeptic" Jean-Michel Abrassart, in Inforespace N.109, pp 4-7, Dec. 2004.
I showed above what the crop circle makers already managed to demonstrate publicly, at night, on TV. But in 2002, skeptic champion Joe Nickell managed to make a fool of himself. He was so uninformed and unwilling to do a real investigation that he did not even know that really convincing demonstrations were already done, and believed he could make a case with his own...
Joe Nickell is a leading figure at CSICOP, the "Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal", a famous hardliners group that denies with more or less accuracy just about anything that is not yet part of what they consider real, from spoon bending to astrology to alien visits to cancer cures.
In October 2002, Joe Nickell made a demonstration on how to create crop circles, which was aired on CNBC on August 2, 2002 in "The News with Brian Williams."
As it sometimes happens with CSICOP's debunking (*), in my opinion the demonstration is totally unconvincing.
Joe Nickell shows how to use a rope and a plank. Of course this is fine, this is indeed how a circle is done.
But the formation he tried to create, in broad daylight, with a friend, is only a single circle of 17 meters diameter in wild grass. It took them two hours to do it! Worse, the result is totally pathetic, I couldn't help but to think than a child could do much better:
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CSICOP provides an entirely unconvincing video at www.csicop.org/articles/20021024-cropcircles
While CSICOP wanted to show that crop circles can be made by men, this utterly awful "circle" can only serve the opposite view!
All that can be seen here is that apparently, in broad daylight, two men are not even capable of creating one single decent circle in two hours!
They must have realized that. On August 9, 2002, they made another attempt in an oat field. It was a circle surrounded by a ring, and a second smaller circle touching it, a 36 * 27 meters long figure. They were a team of three, they worked in daylight again, the do not provide the time it took to make the formation, and the result is again unimpressive, with obvious irregularities visible despite the distance and angle:
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They apparently fail to provide any education: they should have told that they were unprepared debutants while hoaxers are experts with up to 20 years experience of crop circle making. They should have done the demo at night, or explained why it is not a big problem to do it at night under the moonlight or aided with flashlights. They should have trained first, and prepared for months, like crop circle makers do.
This is certainly the most pathetic reconstitution ever. People who saw that on TV must have been left out with the clear but wrong impression that they proved crop circles are NOT manmade!
In August 2004, TV channel National Geographic asked experienced crop circles makers John Lundberg, Rod Dickinson and Wil Russell, for a daylight demo in Wiltshire.
The demonstration was excellent: the design they chose was quite difficult: a 200 ft diagonal square spiral. Intricate squares are easy to do, one round spiral is easy to do, but a square spiral had never been done before and the risk of failure is high as just one error ruins the entire formation.
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This is a view of the formation, that I enhanced so that the spiral is clearly visible: |
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The CircleMakers have a web page about this demo including their original pictures of the formation at: www.circlemakers.org/Img/nat_geo_stomper.jpg
The three took 5 hours to achieve the formation. This might appear "long" but it is certainly not too much: it is much shorter than a night. Also, it could have been even shorter: the team had to make lots of breaks for National Geographics' filming.
Proponents of course criticized the demo by saying that it was done in daylight. But this does not really matter. Moonlight or flashlight would have done the trick at night. The reason that it was done in daylight is simply that it is very hard to get useable film in the night. When the demo is done at night, proponents criticize is just as well, saying that you do not clearly see the creation of the formation!
It is not true that crop circle makers never confess.
What is true, is that when a crop circle becomes famous, even circle makers who have nothing to do with its realization claim they did it, and in the world of crop circle makers teams, lies and misinformation reign. They cannot either formally assert the formations made in all illegality since they would get in trouble with the authorities. They thus confess a crop circle here while denying it there, and you would not get a signed paper they did it when the formation was not authorized before realization.
This all mess is entirely ok to discredit all attempts to end the mystery. Artists want the prestige they deserve and they know that if it becomes too obvious that all the circles are made by artists, nobody will pay attention to their work anymore. They do not want "to kill the mystery", while making their talent known at the same time. If the mystery is completely killed, their art will not fill anymore books, will not be shown anymore on the Internet and on the TV.
It is enough to claim "it is not convincing" and to repeat it, to get some people to believe it.
Actually, as that can be understood in the examples I gave above, there are both laughable demonstrations and convincing demonstrations. Why is that?
Creating nice crop circles requires experience and preparation.
People who never constructed a crop circle and who think they can make a wonderful crop circle right now do not have any chance to succeed. This is only normal. Sometimes, they forget to tell it, which is a serious mistake. Sometimes, they explained that well, but "believers" do not listen to them, they prefer putting forward failed circles than inform on the successful circles anyway.
I want to supplement my information concerning successful circles. These are there still things that the proponents generally never tell you.
Not only were good creations of crop circles by night by small teams and in record time done and shown, but moreover, there was and there will probably still be crop circles creation contests.
For example there was the contest organized by crop circle magazine "The Cerealogist", with Rupert Sheldrake, the newspaper The Guardian, a German magazine and the financial support of the Arthur Koestler foundation, which was held in the night from the 11th to the 12th of July, 1992 in West Wycombe, Bucks, England.
People from the magazine, who were not convinced at all that men can do all the crop circles so quickly by night, announced as objective "to check to which extent people were able to reproduce the details of the elaborate crop circles which had appeared in wheat and other crop for 12 years in England and elsewhere." The magazine flatly indicated their bias:
"This initiative is prompted by the recent, much publicized but largely unsubstantiated claims that hoaxers are responsible for many of the formations. It is hoped that those who have made such claims will be prepared to demonstrate their skills in public."
People at the magazine thought at that time that "almost all" the crop circles were "genuine" (made by aliens or by some paranormal cause) and that people who had confessed to have made crop circles were liars, while ignoring they had already made demonstrations.
They offered a 5200$ reward for the best realization.
In spite of the risks of arrest by the police force that some of the candidates incurred, no less than 12 teams took the challenge, and made 12 crop circles, by night, without lighting, not using anything else than planks, PVC pipes, a scale, rope, garden rollers. Among the teams was Jim Schnabel, who was in writing of a book explaining how to make crop circles (Round in Circles, Prometheus Books, 1994). That night there, he made a complex and successful crop circle all alone!
It was proved that night that the most complex circles could be made by night, in record time, with simple and cheap equipment.
The best team, a group of three engineers, won the 5200$ prize.
The formations were so successful and impressive that an artist named John Lundberg who thought at that time that the crop circles may be something mysterious and who was skeptic as for the confession of "Doug and Dave" became impassioned for this new form of art and formed with three friends the famous CircleMakers (www.circlemakers.org), a semi-clandestine group now well-known for their particularly impressive formations.
"First prize went to three engineers from a British helicopter company, who used rope, plastic piping, and a ladder suspended from a trestle. Close behind in the competition was American J. Schnabel, who, working all alone, required only a plank, some rope, and a small garden roller to produce a creditable, rather elaborate design."
Source: "Circle Hoax Contest," Science, 257:481, 1992.
What did the believers say? Most of them did not say anything at all during some time, keeping silence while hoping that lack of information and amnesia would make people forget all that. "The show must go on."
When you ask them now about the 1992 contest, they tell that it is not true, that nobody won, that the fake crop circles were awful and so on.
What did Ruppert Sheldrake say? He said that the fact that people can make crop circles identical to the "genuine" crop circle does not prove that there are no "genuine" crop circles elsewhere... He did not tell which ones.
There were many other contests thereafter but to no avail: you will always find people who say that men cannot make all the crop circles.
When "experts" tell you that it is impossible that men make all these complex formations in the fields and that it is proven because nobody was never seen making it by night, they lie to you. It is a lie, because they know very well that it was demonstrated.
When people tell you that there never was a convincing demonstration, they are quite simply not informed, because those who make profit out of the crop circles mystery do not provide this kind of information.
October 3, 2009.
