Crop Pictograms and Skepticism

There is widespread public belief that crop circles are an elaborate hoax perpetrated by two English pensioners ("Doug and Dave") in the 1980s and early 1990s. It is often assumed that the phenomenon must have gone away since then, because the media stopped reporting on it. But the phenomenon has not gone away at all. Geometrical and artistic designs of stunning complexity, precision and sheer size continue to be found in crops around the world and year after year, largely ignored by the general public, the mass media and a scientific establishment that has apparently lost all natural sense of curiosity. According to the skeptics, all crop formations are human-made- "case closed". But reality is more complex than the skeptics would like the public to believe. Clearly, many crop formations are hoaxed, but it remains an open question whether this explanation accounts for all of them. This article examines the failure of the skeptical movement to be properly skeptical with respect to this phenomenon.

Hoaxing and Skepticism

In September 1991, the British tabloid Today broke the story that two pensioners, Doug Bower and David Chorley, had created all of the crop formation since 1978 (all 2000 of them). Bower and Chorley demonstrated in front of TV cameras that by using a wooden plank and string, they were able to create a crude circular design in broad daylight that showed non of the precision or complexity of the best formations. At that time, the "circles" had already evolved into highly complex pictograms, and Bower and Chorley could offer no explanation of how they created these. The tabloid that broke the story claimed that one of D&D's creations was so good that it fooled prominent British crop circle researcher Pat Delgado, but creation of this circle had not been documented on film.

In that situation, a true skeptic would have perceived

Any person who is even remotely sane would have received Bower's and Chorley's claim with skepticism. If they created hundreds or thousands of formations, how come they had never gotten caught? And why had there been not at least some incomplete formations, where the duo had to leave a circle unfinished and make a hasty retreat because they would otherwise have been discovered? Yet the public, the mass media and organized skeptics in particular endorsed the claims enthusiastically and denounced the whole crop circle phenomenon a proven hoax. If a tabloid had claimed that it had found "aliens behind the crop circle phenomenon", neither the media nor the skeptical groups would have paid attention, and with good reason. Tabloids are not a reliable source of information. Yet when a tabloid told them what they wanted to hear, they threw all skepticism to the wind. Apparently, when people are confronted with a phenomenon that challenges their basic assumptions about reality, they will react to the cognitive dissonance by abandoning their critical faculties for any "explanation", no matter how implausible and contrived.

In a 2001 interview, Colin Andrews gives the following eyewitness report of a part of the initial investigation into Doug & Dave's claim conducted by Today.

"In September of 1991, Doug Bowers and Dave Chorley approached the Today national newspaper, in England, saying they were responsible for all the crop circles, and requesting a fee for their story. The fee (and I had this confirmed) was 10,000 UK pounds paid to them in two parts, 5,000 upon publication and 5,000 some months later. So money was involved. I think it is important to say that.
The Today newspaper sent out a journalist for a week. And at the end of that week the journalist, with a photographer and, indeed, with Doug and Dave themselves, arrived at the home of my co-author and co-researcher at that time, Pat Delgado, and said that they had something they wanted to discuss. They went into the house, and Pat Delgado, after a few moments of listening, got on the phone to me saying that this meeting was very important and that I really should come over immediately — which I did.
By the time I arrived, they had already spent several hours together, and it was made clear to me that I was not there by invitation as far as the newspaper was concerned.
As I listened to Doug and Dave's story, it became clear to me that what they were saying was no threat to me personally because my name was not going to be mentioned. It did become increasingly clear, however, that in the story to be written by the reporter the next morning, Pat Delgado was going to be made to look extremely foolish.
You also have to know that I was very interested in what was being said because just the week before I had given up a very well-paying job within the British government to take on this research on a full-time basis. I had no idea how I was going to fund my work except for the royalties of the first book. So you can imagine the impact these men's words had on me.
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.
So upon hearing this story, I forced my way in and asked Dave Bowers — and this is the bottom line here — "You know the cover of our book, Circular Evidence ?"
"Yes," he said. "We made all of those on that site."
So I said to Pat, "Do you have a pen and paper?" Pat and I had spent many hours studying the plants in the Celtic Cross that appeared on the cover of our book, and we actually never did reveal its location to the public because the farmer didn't want a lot of people there.
In this circle, the plants were lying radially across the actual ring. So in other words, rather than lying in sympathy with the flow, as you would expect the plants to be if they had been flattened with a wooden plank, these were laying at 90 degrees radially straight out.
I drew the ring that connected the four satellites that connected the Celtic Cross around the central circle. I drew this design, and then I asked Doug how they had made it.
There was this stony, icy silence. Nobody talked. The journalist stopped taking notes, and Doug looked at Dave, and he had nothing to offer. And he looked back again, and he looked down. And then he looked at me and said, "We didn't make that one."

Closer investigation reveals other problems with Doug and Dave's story. Many crop formations had been reported in other countries, including Canada and the United States. D&D claimed that they started making circles in 1978, but crop circles have been reported prior to 1978. Crop circle researcher Freddy Silva gives details in Secrets in the Fields (Hampton Roads Publishing, 2002):

Modern hoaxers claim that they applied boot to wheat in 1978, yet crop circles have appeared sporadically throughout the world since the early 1900s, with dozens of eyewitnesses reporting crop circles forming in a matter of seconds as far back as 1890; several descriptive accounts were even documented in 1678 by Robert Plot, then curator of the Ashmolean. If hoaxers are responsible, they also appear to have mastered the art of time travel, in which case it is they who should be under scientific scrutiny.

Doug and Dave changed their story as far as the beginning of the hoaxing is concerned. The British tabloid Today broke the story on September 9, 1991. It mentions that the perpetrators had been creating circles "for 13 years", i.e. since 1978. But almost two years later, at a public lecture in England, Bower had changed his story. A report of this event by Canadian astronomer and UFO researcher Chris Rutkowski can be found on the google news archive. According to this, Bower and Chorley "began their crop circle career in 1975, not the 1981 [sic] previously referred to in the TODAY newspaper. "

On his website, Freddy Silva gives the following summary of an (unattributed) TV debate:

Doug and Dave were challenged to a TV debate with several researchers, including an authority on the subject, Colin Andrews. "Had they hoaxed the first formations in 1978 ?" "Yes," said Dave. Then Colin pulled out photos of patterns going back to 1971. "Who then had made these?" "No," they answered, sheepishly, "we didn't make those." And if they had faked 200 circles, as they claimed, by whom were the remaining 2300 or so circles created? They had also claimed never to have been active in the Avebury area, but this had in fact been the prime circle-making area since 1988. Who made the Barbury Castle tetrahedron? And the Mandelbrot Set? Who made those in other parts of the country? And since the countryside was swarming with people on the lookout for hoaxers, how come they had never been caught? No answer. How had they created the anomalies, the mathematical precision? The more questions were asked the more they backed down their claims. In the end, even Doug and Dave were not sure which ones they had done.

Let us turn to examining skeptical arguments in support of the hoaxing hypothesis. A cover story in the Winter 1992 issue of the Skeptical Inquirer (Vol. 16, p. 136-149) by Joe Nickell and John F. Fischer lists four major arguments that are reviewed in a report titled Circular Reasoning: The 'Mystery' of Crop Circles and Their 'Orbs' of Light (SI, September/October 2002) by Joe Nickel. These are

(begin quote)

  1. An Escalation in Frequency. Although there were sporadic reports of simple circles in earlier times and in various countries (possibly as UFO-landing-spot hoaxes), the classic crop circles began to be reported by the mid 1970s. Data on the circles showed that their number increased annually from 1981-1987, an escalation that seemed to correlate with media coverage of the phenomenon. In fact it appeared that the coverage helped prompt further hoaxes.
  2. Geographic Distribution. The phenomenon showed a decided predilection for a limited geographic area, flourishing in southern England-in Hampshire, Wiltshire, and nearby counties. It was there that the circles effect captured the world's attention. And, just as the number of circles increased, so their locations spread. After newspaper and television reports on the phenomenon began to increase in the latter 1980s, the formations began to crop up (so to speak) in significant numbers around the world. Indeed the circles effect appeared to be a media-borne "virus."
  3. Increase in Complexity. A very important characteristic of the patterned-crops phenomenon was the tendency of the configurations to become increasingly elaborate over time. They progressed from simple swirled circles to circles with rings and satellites, to still more complex patterns. In 1987 came a crop message, "WEARENOTALONE" (although skeptics observed that, if the source were indeed English-speaking extraterrestrials, the message should have read "You" rather than "We"). In 1990 came still more complex patterns, dubbed "pictograms." There were also free-form shapes (e.g., a "tadpole"-like design), a witty crop triangle, and the hilarious bicycle (see Hoggart and Hutchinson 1995, 59). There also appeared beautifully interlinked spirals, a Menorah, intricate "snowflake" and stylized "spider web" designs, elaborate "Torus Knot" and "Mandala" emblems, pentagram and floral patterns, and other distinctive formations, including an "Origami Hexagram" and several fractals (mathematical designs with a motif subjected to repeated subdivision)-all consistent with the intelligence of modern homo sapiens. At the end of the decade came many designs that included decidedly square and rectilinear shapes, seeming to represent a wry response to the hypothesized swirling "vortex" mechanism.
  4. The Shyness Factor. A fourth characteristic of the cropfield phenomenon is its avoidance of being observed in action. It is largely nocturnal, and the designs even appear to specifically resist being seen, as shown by Operation White Crow. That was an eight-night vigil maintained by about sixty cereologists in June 1989. Not only did no circles appear in the field chosen for surveillance but-although there had already been almost a hundred formations that summer, with yet another 170 or so to occur-not a single circle was reported during the period anywhere in England. Then a large circle-and-ring formation was discovered about 500 yards away on the very next day!
(end quote)

It is indisputable that all four observations are compatible with the hoaxing hypothesis. But compatibility is not enough to decide in favor of one hypothesis and against another. To distinguish between competing hypotheses, one must produce evidence that is compatible with one hypothesis, but not the others. If Nickell and Fischer had examined that question, they would have found that their four arguments for hoaxing are perfectly compatible with the hypothesis that crop formations, or at least some of them, are created on purpose by a non-human intelligence (NHI), such as extraterrestrials or spiritual beings. NHI could create such a phenomenon as a social science experiment, to observe our reactions, or to stimulate public imagination or interest in the paranormal. NHI would then observe the reaction of the public and the media, and create further stimuli accordingly. If NHI is motivated by scientific inquiry, it would increase the frequency and complexity of stimuli over time, to observe the process of hypothesis formation and retraction, as hypotheses of natural origin that may originally have seemed adequate become inadequate. If NHI is trying to stimulate spiritual growth, it would also increase the frequency and complexity of stimuli slowly, to avoid shock and confusion and try to get humanity used to the idea of higher intelligence gradually. For the same reason, NIH could be expected to be "shy": an overwhelming, undeniable demonstration of advanced technology or supernatural power would send much of the world's population and its governments into panic, and advance neither hypothetical purpose just outlined. The observation that the obvious intelligence behind the formations seems to respond to expectations and theories about the formations, and even exhibit a sense of humor can once again not distinguish between human hoaxers and NHI.

To their credit, Nickell and Fischer do not yield to the temptation to go beyond the truly skeptical position and make unprovable counter-claims. The conclusion of their 1991 paper is simply that

The burden remains with the cereologists to justify postulating anything other than such hoaxes for the mystery circles. We feel that their time would be better spent attempting to identify more of the hoaxers and to learn what motivates them to do their work.

Other "skeptics" are not as prudent and make claims of their own, without meeting the burden of proof. A recent Scientific American article (August 2002, p.25, Crop Circle Confession) illustrates this skeptical "leap of faith". Matt Ridley describes how he made simple circular designs in English crops using just a rope. He boasts, "two days later there was an excited call to the authorities from the local farmer: I had fooled my first victim". Without access to a wiretap, how did Mr. Ridley know that the phone call was "excited", and that the farmer was "fooled"? Apparently, it did not occur to him that the farmer might have called the authorities simply because he felt that his property had been vandalized. Ridley further refers to Chorley and Bower as the "original circle makers" "who started it all in 1978", as if this was a fact, even though there is no proof that D&D's claim is truthful. He concludes his "skeptical" treatise of the subject by an astonishing admission: "As for the identity of those who created the complicated mathematical and fractal patterns that appeared in the mid-1990s, I have no idea. But Occam's razor suggests they were more likely to be undergraduates than aliens."

What we have here is an example of the basic "skeptical double standard" : when faced with an extraordinary phenomenon, pseudoskeptics will reject one extraordinary claim, namely the hypothesis that the phenomenon is created by a nonhuman intelligence, by substituting an extraordinary claim of their own, namely the hoaxing hypothesis. And while they will insist that the supporters of the former claim produce extraordinary evidence in support, their own extraordinary claim rests on mere conjecture, (pseudo)plausibility and (logically improper) induction: simpler instances of the phenomenon were proven to be hoaxes, so all of them, including the most complex ones, must be hoaxes as well. This fallacy is then mislabeled and sold to the general public as "Occam's Razor". Occam's Razor is of course only a philosophical rule of thumb; it is not a part of the scientific method and does not decide whether scientific claims are true or false.

Some crop circle researchers are far more skeptical of their own assumptions than self-appointed skeptics like Matt Ridley. On August 18, 2000 leading crop circle researcher Colin Andrews made a public statement in which he announced his conclusion that 80% of the formations he had studied during a two-year period were hoaxed, and that 20% were genuine. The statement shows that Andrews has taken the skeptical admonition to spend more time "attempting to identify more of the hoaxers and to learn what motivates them to do their work" to heart.

"For a number of years I have been aware of a growing level of man-made creations. During the mid-1990's I was shown privileged information by a BBC journalist who had gone undercover for two years working closely with Dave Chorley and Doug Bowers in an effort to establish the truth behind their claims to be making crop circles. I was shown letters mailed by Doug &Dave where they drew the patterns that they planned to make in Hampshire and Wiltshire, along with the dates and places that they planned to make them. On the envelopes of some of the letters they sketched the planned design and placed the stamp over it, which was then date-stamped by the Royal Mail. Those patterns did appear, as had been proclaimed. Unknown to Doug and Dave, they were being filmed as they made the circles by the BBC journalist. In ensuing weeks, other hoaxers were tracked and their handy-work also filmed. I did not want to believe the evidence being handed me, as others now do not want to believe me. To satisfy my own need for honest research, I began my own investigation into human involvement. I would suggest that anyone who disagrees with my conclusion, investigates hoaxing themselves, rather than falling back on the argument that it can't be done by humans. In 1997, I was given a video of a formation at Oliver's Castle being made by balls of light. Although I wanted to believe it was real, things weren't adding up and I hired a private detective to unravel the loose ends. The investigation turned up irrefutable evidence that the video and the formation were hoaxes. Peter Sorenson, acting on his own information, came to the same conclusion. During 1999 I began another special project into people making crop circles. My research has included detective work, site inspections, physical evidence, aerial photography, personal experiences, information from media who have paid to have formations created for upcoming programs, and from undercover researchers. My findings at this time are that ample evidence exists that an estimated 80% of crop circles are man-made. On the other hand, 20% revealed no evidence of human involvement. A handful of these 20% also displayed the newly discovered magnetic profile (all these were simple formations). Some of the filmed evidence will be seen in an upcoming Channel Four production and a BBC documentary scheduled for early next year. The latter will also be shown on BBC2 and American TV. It should be emphasized that NO EVIDENCE of human involvement could be found in 20% of the formations. All investigation has been done on crop circles in the UK and therefore, the results refer only to the situation in the UK."

Physical Evidence

Absence of evidence of human involvement is of course not evidence of absence of human involvement. To make a convincing case for non-human origin of at least some crop formations, crop researchers must therefore show the existence of objective physical anomalies. BLT Research Team, lead by biophysicist William C. Levengood has been investigating physical anomalies of samples taken from crop circles for over a decade and claims to have found clear abnormalities in the plant and soil samples obtained from 90% of the over 300 crop formations examined, as compared to controls taken outside the formations. Their latest paper is Dispersion Of Energies In Worldwide Crop Formations, published in Physiologia Plantarum, an international journal of experimental plant biology.

It is interesting to study how the BLT results have been received by the pseudoskeptical community. A September 2002 article in the Skeptical Inquirer first discusses hoaxing at length, and then makes the following remarkable statement.

"Nevertheless the croppies were sure that some of the formations must be genuine, citing various "unexplained" features. More recently they invoked new "scientific" evidence in that regard, such as that provided by "the BLT Research Team" in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The "B" and "T" are circle "researchers" and "L" is a semi-retired biophysicist, W.C. Levengood. He finds a correlation between certain deformities in plants and their locations within crop-circle- type formations, but not control plants outside them (Levengood and Talbott 1999). However, correlation is not causation, and there are other objections to his work (Nickell 1996a). As well, more mundane hypotheses for the effects-for instance, compressed moist plants steaming in the hot sun-appear to have been insufficiently considered."

The author of the article, professional skeptic Joe Nickell, apparently has no scientific credentials. In an interview, he is described as "not your 'average Joe', by nature of former occupations of : undercover detective, teacher, draft dodger, river boat manager, carnival promoter, magician, investigator and spokesperson. " In other words, he is the same type of person as many of the crop circle researchers: a self-taught investigator without formal scientific education. It is therefore mysterious why he would call so much attention to the issue of scientific credentials by sarcastically placing quotation marks around "scientific" and "researcher" when describing his opponents. It is hypocritical to presume to be qualified to write an article on a scientific subject matter in a major publication while simultaneously denying that similarly or higher qualified individuals can make meaningful contributions to the very same research area.

Ridicule and innuendo have of course no place in any scientific investigation, and their use suggest that the author does not consider his arguments of fact strong enough to be convincing on their own merits. Indeed, Nickell concedes the validity of the central thesis of his opponent's work. He admits that Levengood and his co-workers have uncovered a correlation between deformities in plants and their location inside crop formations, but dismisses it by demolishing the straw man that correlation does not prove causation. While it is true that correlation does not prove causation, it is evidence for causation. Any empirical investigation starts by showing correlation first, which leads to formulation of a working hypothesis of causation. One then attempts to falsify that hypothesis by identifying and controlling the independent variables. If all those attempts fails, the correlation is accepted as provisional proof for a causal connection. That is how empirical science works. Nickell's criticism is therefore uncontrolled, meaning it applies not only to the criticized research, but to accepted research as well. In this case, the uncontrolled criticism calls the scientific method itself into question.

Nickell's argument that "more mundane hypotheses for the effects-for instance, compressed moist plants steaming in the hot sun-appear to have been insufficiently considered" is not supported by any references. By making the positive claim that steam can account for the results observed by Levengood, he ceases to be a skeptic and becomes a claimant, and thus must also bear the burden of proof. Just throwing out an idle alternative hypothesis that could conceivable account for the results is insufficient.

One can presume that a writer who has limited space to convince the reader of the validity of a particular point of view would select only the very best arguments for inclusion, and refer to weaker, supporting arguments only by referencing other papers. Since the argument Nickell chose against BLT is completely invalid, one would expect the other arguments to be of a similarly weak nature. They are. In the referenced 1996 article Levengood's Crop-Circle Plant Research, Nickell first criticizes that Levengood did not conduct his research in a double-blind manner, "so as to minimize the effects of experimenter bias". Once again, an uncontrolled criticism. While medical studies on human subjects have to be double-blind to control for the placebo effect, this is not a standard requirement for other fields of research. In Experimenter Effects in Scientific Research: How Widely Are They Neglected? (Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 12, 1) Rupert Sheldrake shows that possible experimenter bias is rarely controlled for in conventional science:

[Abstract] A survey of recent papers published in a range of scientific journals showed that the use of blind methodologies is very rare in the so-called hard sciences. In the physical sciences, no blind experiments were found among the 237 papers reviewed. In the biological sciences, there were 7 blind experiments out of 914 (0.8%). There was a higher proportion in the medical sciences, 6 out of 102 (5.9%), and in psychology and animal behavior, 7 out of 143 (4.9%). By far the highest proportion (85.2%) was in parapsychology. A survey of science departments in 11 British Universities showed that blind methodologies are neither used nor taught in 22 out of 23 physics and chemistry departments, or in 14 out of 16 biochemistry and molecular biology departments. By contrast, blind methodologies are sometimes practiced and taught in 4 out of 8 genetics departments, and in 6 out of 8 physiology departments.

Nickell thinks his demand for higher standards than normally considered sufficient for scientific inquiry justified because "Levengood's attitudes and assumptions reveal him as a partisan crop-circle 'believer'". This is hypocrisy of the highest order, because Nickell's own attitudes and assumptions qualify him as a partisan crop circle disbeliever. Once again, he applies a higher ethical standard of scientific conduct to his opponent than to himself. While he apparently considers it acceptable for himself to subscribe to a firmly held opinion, and does not consider that this could affect his objectivity, he does not grant the same privilege to his opponent. He attacks Levengood for trying to prove a working hypothesis, which is perfectly normal scientific practice. The hypothetical possibility of experimenter bias is insufficient to discredit Levengood's research- Nickell would have to conduct a detailed review of Levengood's work and show that experimenter bias actually occurred.

Based on Nickell's manifest hostility to Levengood's research, it is doubtful that he would have accepted it as valid if Levengood had conducted the research in a double-blind fashion, or if the work had been "independently replicated by qualified scientists following stringent scientific protocols". One wonders how this replication by serious scientists can ever be attempted, given the public climate of intense ridicule that is created and maintained by the aggressive public lobbying of the pseudoskeptics. Nickell's request for replication, accompanied by the conclusion that until and unless such replication has taken place, there is "no need to take seriously the many dubious claims that Levengood makes" exemplifies the "catch-22" that the pseudoskeptical community establishes around unconventional phenomena: anomalous results cannot be taken seriously by science until science has replicated them. This way, naturally, no attempt will ever be made to replicate the anomalous result, which is of course the intent behind all the "skeptical" noise.

Nickell devotes considerable space to his claim that Levengood's reasoning is "circular". He writes

Crucially, since there is no satisfactory evidence that a single "genuine" (i.e., "vortex"-produced) crop circle exists, Levengood's reasoning is circular: although there are no guaranteed genuine formations on which to conduct research, the research supposedly proves the genuineness of the formations. But if the work were really valid, Levengood would be expected to find that a high percentage of the crop circles chosen for research were actually hoaxed, especially since even many ardent cereologists admit there are more hoaxed than "genuine" ones (Nickell 1996a; Nickell and Fischer 1992). For example, prominent cereologist Colin Andrews (2001) has conceded that 80 percent of the British crop circles are manmade; yet Levengood claims his research "suggests that over 95 percent of worldwide crop formations involve organized ion plasma vortices . . ." (Levengood and Talbott 1999).

But Nickell misrepresents the nature of Levengood's results. The high correlation between plant anomalies and location inside a formation does not hold up just among the subset of samples taken from circles that have been decided to be genuine because they show the anomalous effect (which would indeed be circular reasoning), it holds across the entire data set. Anomalies that confound the hoaxing hypothesis were found in the samples from 90% of all formations examined. They are therefore "genuine" in the sense that they defy prosaic explanation. Once a clear anomaly has been established in the overwhelming majority of objects examined, it is reasonable to then incorporate the presence of the anomaly into the definition of the set of objects studied. That is not circular reasoning, it is how science progresses.

It is worth noting that Nickell's criticism can legitimately be made with respect to epidemiology. In his famous 1984 Science papers that supposedly establish that HIV causes AIDS, Robert Gallo reported to have found HIV in only 13 out of 43 adult AIDS patients with Kaposi's sarcoma (30.2%), yet based on this research, medical science re-defined AIDS to require HIV infection. AIDS cases without HIV infection were from then on called "Ideopathic CD4 Lymphocytopenia". A similar phenomenon happened recently in the case of SARS. An apparent new disease occurred and a certain coronavirus was found in about 30% of patients suffering from the disease. The disease definition was then adjusted to require infection by that virus, instantaneously making the epidemiological correlation perfect and sidestepping the issue of causation. It is therefore reasonable to ask why Nickell does not devote some of his "skeptical" energy to expose the "circular reasoning of modern epidemiology", where diseases are diagnosed and tracked based on testing positive for viruses that have arbitrarily (meaning not based on a solid correlation) been included in the definition for the diseases.

To avoid confronting the conclusion that Levengood's research shows the existence of an anomaly, Nickell uses a classical pseudoskeptical tactic, one that has been deftly exposed by Dean Radin in The Conscious Universe :

Because no plausible explanations remain for the experimental results obtained with psi, the few remaining hard-core skeptics rehash the same old polemical argument used in past decades. The core assertion is the tired claim that after one hundred years of research, parapsychology has failed to provide convincing evidence for psi phenomena.

This argument follows a certain logic. Skeptics refuse to believe that psi experiments, which they admit are successfully demonstrating something are in fact demonstrating psi itself. (..) This is like a skeptic refusing to call a group of nine players who win the World Series a "baseball team". In that case, the skeptic can simply smile, shrug, and doggedly claim that yes, people do apparently go running after balls that other people occasionally hit with a bat. But still, after one hundred years there is no solid evidence that anything called a baseball team actually exists!

Nickell's argument follows the same pattern. He does not deny that an anomaly exists, but he refuses to call the anomalous formations "genuine" by making Levengood's vortex theory of causation part of the definition of the "genuine" phenomenon. This is of course invalid reasoning. The principal claim of the cereologists is that an anomaly exists, nothing more. Research conducted in support of that claim does not also have to prove particular theories of causation in order to be valid.

He then again demands higher standards from the proto-science of crop circles than demanded from conventional science, claiming that Levengood's results contradict estimates by other crop circle researchers. Even if that was true, it would be an uncontrolled criticism. In any science, there are differences of opinion. If it is a requirement for proper science that all its members speak with one voice, and do not hold contradictory opinions, then proper science does not exist. He argues that crop circle researcher Colin Andrews has "conceded" that 80% of the British formations are man-made, but Andrews' statement only referred to formations made during the period 1999-2000. In addition, matters of scientific truth are not the domain of single persons, even prominent ones, to concede, At any rate, Andrews' statement refers only to the UK (where hoaxing would be expected to occur far more frequently due to the public prominence of the phenomenon) while Levengood has examined samples from crop formations from the USA, Canada, Australia and England. The two statements are therefore not necessarily contradictory. In addition, due to lack of sufficient funds, Levengood has never been able to examine samples from all crop formations reported worldwide. His selection is therefore not necessarily representative.

Conclusions

Given the contradictory evidence, it is inappropriate to draw conclusions about the crop circle phenomenon at this time. But it is already great case material for identifying "skeptical" fallacies.

Further Reading:

Silvar's Crop Circle History

The Crop Circle Connector

Swirled News

Crop Circle Central

The Crop Circular

German Association for Crop Circle Research
(german language)


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