From: matus [matus@snet.net]
Sent: Thursday, August 08, 2002 12:06 AM
To: matus@snet.net
Subject: MFD List - Ben Bova: The truth is out there 'Signs'

(All, this is an article by science author Ben Bova mainly pertaining to the
upcoming film 'Signs' with Mel Gibson but touching on diverse topics as
'anxiety news' (the tendance for news stories to tell only things that
increase our anxiety), ancient alien civilizations and Nuclear power plants,
a good read - Mike)

Ben Bova: The truth is out there ... but not as far as some would like us to
think

http://www.naplesnews.com/02/07/perspective/d800617a.htm

Sunday, July 21, 2002

By BEN BOVA, Special to the Daily News

I've enjoyed several of Mel Gibson's films, but his latest, "Signs," which
deals with "mysterious" crop circles, worries me.

>From all the previews and advanced publicity about it that I've seen, it's
based on nonsense.

Crop circles aren't any more mysterious than spitballs, and they are
certainly not the work of extraterrestrial visitors. But some people feel
that the answers to "mysteries" aren't as much fun as the mysteries
themselves.

Ben Bova

Erik von Daniken knew that. In his best-selling 1969 book, "Chariots of the
Gods?" von Daniken proposed that extraterrestrial visitors to Earth built
the pyramids of Egypt, the stone statues of Easter Island, Stonehenge in
Britain, and other ancient monuments.

These bigger-then-life monuments couldn't have been built by ordinary
humans, with the pitiful tools and knowledge they had back in those ancient
days, von Daniken claimed. So our ancestors must have been helped by alien
visitors.

The fact that each of these outstanding works could be built with nothing
more than earthen ramps, wooden rollers, rope pulleys and plenty of human
sweat was of no interest to von Daniken or his readers.

The fact that the Egyptians left records of how they built the pyramids, and
that later investigators have duplicated the methods used to raise
Stonehenge and the Easter Island statues somehow isn't as exciting as the
idea of alien astronauts helping our ancestors.

To scientists, the questions are fascinating but the answers are
exhilarating. Knowledge is what scientists seek. But many other people revel
in ignorance and mystery.

Such as the crop circles, for example.

Back in 1978, in Britain, fields of crops suddenly sported circles of
flattened grain. Overnight, circles and other geometric figures sprouted in
fields all across Britain.

Did alien spaceships flatten the grain? Were the geometric figures an
attempt by extraterrestrials to contact us? The news media trumpeted stories
about the crop circles. Experts cropped up (sorry, I couldn't help myself),
calling themselves "cerealologists," and pushed heavily on the
extraterrestrial explanation. Some of the cerealologists, however, put the
blame elsewhere, including tornadoes, ball lightning, and even the devil.

No one thought that the crop circles (and squares, and other shapes) might
be the work of deliberate hoaxers. At least, no one who thought so got any
time on television or space in newspapers.

After several years of such furor, two men stepped forward and admitted that
they had made the crop circles. Doug Bowker and Dave Chorley told the media
that the had done it for a lark, and they were delighted with all the
nonsense that their tricks had produced.

The cerealologists and other "true believers" cried foul. They refused to
believe that two men could produce the circles during the few hours of
darkness.

Bowker and Chorley showed them how they did it: by walking on planks that
pressed the grain down. They made the circles by tying one end of the plank
to a stake in the ground. The other figures were made by similarly simple
methods.

No, no, no! the true believers insisted. It can't be. Even when Bowker and
Chorley showed how they did their deeds, they refused to accept the idea
that ordinary human beings could create the crop circles. They much
preferred to cling to the mystery of it all.

Thus the "mystery" continues, to this day. And now Hollywood - that bastion
of scientific integrity - has climbed onto the crop circle bandwagon.

In the most recent issue of Scientific American magazine, science writer
Matt Ridley how he made crop circles - and how the faithful refuse to
believe his explanation for them. He reports that the circles were easy to
make, often it took only a few minutes.

Ridley says he "found it all too easy to fool the self-appointed experts but
all too hard to dent the gullibility of reporters." As a man who has spent
his life writing about science for the general public, my ears perked up at
that last statement about the gullibility of reporters.

I started my career in newspapers. I learned early on that "facts" must be
checked and corroborated. It is all too easy to fall for a lie, or a
half-truth. It is even easier to believe what you want to believe.

Crop circles make good stories, and the more mysterious and perhaps even
frightening they are, the better the story. Explaining crop circles as
hoaxes perpetrated by bright undergraduate students is nowhere near as
interesting as casting fearful looks at the sky and wondering when the
aliens will invade us.

Reporters have a bias toward stories that will interest their audience.
Nobody writes a headline about the fact that 99 percent of the people did
not commit murder or arson or any other kind of violent crime today. The one
who did kill, or rape, or burn - he's the one who gets the headlines.

Similarly, there are no headlines when a nuclear power plant generates
electricity day after day, year after year. But if the plant goes off-line
for maintenance or refueling, it's news.

There are no stories about the catastrophes that have been caused by nuclear
waste, because there have been no such catastrophes. But the news media
write stories about the potential dangers of nuclear waste, and they've been
doing it for so long that the average citizen is frightened of the idea of
transporting nuclear waste to a final repository site in Nevada.

The governor of South Carolina tried to prevent transport of nuclear waste
through his state. He'd do much more for the health of his constituents if
he tried to prevent the transport of tobacco through South Carolina.

The television journalist Linda Ellerbee coined the phrase "anxiety news,"
meaning that the media lean heavily toward reporting stories (and slanting
them) to raise the level of anxiety in the general public.

Let me try to lower the anxiety level a little. Crop circles aren't made by
extraterrestrial visitors. Nuclear waste is nowhere near as dangerous to our
health as tobacco or fried foods or fast automobiles or alcohol.

That may not be as satisfying as worrying about alien visitors or nuclear
disaster, but it's the truth.



Naples resident Ben Bova's latest futuristic novel is The Rock Rats. He is a
regular commentator on WGCU-FM every Tuesday morning. Dr. Bova's web site
address is www.benbova.net.

www.matus1976.com - Article archives