From: matus [matus@snet.net]
Sent: Thursday, August 08, 2002 11:02 PM
To: matus@snet.net
Subject: MFD List - Biologist and Author Matt Ridley on making crop
circles

(One of my favorite authors, evolutionary biologist and science popularizer
Matt Ridley writes in Scientific American about his journey creating his own
crop circles.  "The whole episode taught me two important lessons" He said
"First, treat all experts with skepticism and look out for their vested
interests--many cerealogists made a pot of money from writing books and
leading weeklong tours of crop circles, some costing more than $2,000 a
person. Second, never underestimate the gullibility of the media. Even the
Wall Street Journal published articles that failed to take the man-made
explanation seriously." - Mike)

August 2002 issue
Crop Circle Confession

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00038B16-ED5F-1D29-97CA809EC588EE
DF

How to get the wheat down in the dead of night
By Matt Ridley



DAVE OLSON AP Photo


SIGNS OF TERROR or just of human mischief? Wheat flattened in 1998 in
Hubbard, Ore. The center circle is about 35 feet wide.
On August 2, Touchstone Pictures released Signs, starring Mel Gibson as a
farmer who discovers mysterious crop circles. Directed by Sixth Sense auteur
M. Night Shyamalan, the movie injects otherworldly creepiness into crushed
crops. The truth behind the circles is, alas, almost certainly more mundane:
skulking humans. Herewith is the account of one such trickster.

I made my first crop circle in 1991. My motive was to prove how easy they
were to create, because I was convinced that all crop circles were man-made.
It was the only explanation nobody seemed interested in testing. Late one
August night, with one accomplice--my brother-in-law from Texas--I stepped
into a field of nearly ripe wheat in northern England, anchored a rope into
the ground with a spike and began walking in a circle with the rope held
near the ground. It did not work very well: the rope rode up over the
plants. But with a bit of help from our feet to hold down the rope, we soon
had a respectable circle of flattened wheat.

Two days later there was an excited call to the authorities from the local
farmer: I had fooled my first victim. I subsequently made two more crop
circles using far superior techniques. A light garden roller, designed to be
filled with water, proved helpful. Next, I hit on the "plank walking"
technique that was used by the original circle makers, Doug Bower and the
late Dave Chorley, who started it all in 1978. It's done by pushing down the
crop with a plank suspended from two ropes. To render the depression
circular is a simple matter of keeping an anchored rope taut. I soon found
that I could make a sophisticated pattern with very neat edges in less than
an hour.

Getting into the field without leaving traces is a lot easier than is
usually claimed. In dry weather, and if you step carefully, you can leave no
footprints or tracks at all. There are other, even stealthier ways of
getting into the crop. One group of circle makers uses two tall bar stools,
jumping from one to another.

But to my astonishment, throughout the early 1990s the media continued to
report that it was impossible that all crop circles could be man-made. They
cited "cerealogists"--those who study crop circles--and never checked for
themselves. There were said to be too many circles to be the work of a few
"hoaxers" (but this assumed that each circle took many hours to make), or
that circles appeared in well-watched crops (simply not true), or that
circle creation was accompanied by unearthly noises (when these sounds were
played back, even I recognized the nocturnal song of the grasshopper
warbler).

The most ludicrous assertion was that "experts" could distinguish "genuine"
circles from "hoaxed" ones. Even after one such expert, G. Terence Meaden,
asserted on camera that a circle was genuine when in fact its construction
had been filmed by Britain's Channel Four, the program let him off the hook
by saying he might just have made a mistake this time. I soon met other
crop-circle makers, such as Robin W. Allen of the University of Southampton
and Jim Schnabel, author of Round in Circles, who also found it all too easy
to fool the self-appointed experts but all too hard to dent the gullibility
of reporters. When Bower and Chorley confessed, they were denounced on
television as frauds. My own newspaper articles were dismissed as
"government disinformation," and it was hinted that I was in the U.K.
intelligence agency, MI5, which was flattering (and false).

The whole episode taught me two important lessons. First, treat all experts
with skepticism and look out for their vested interests--many cerealogists
made a pot of money from writing books and leading weeklong tours of crop
circles, some costing more than $2,000 a person. Second, never underestimate
the gullibility of the media. Even the Wall Street Journal published
articles that failed to take the man-made explanation seriously.

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.

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