Hi there Dees!
My my, I do need to make time for our crop circle research! Too busy…. So now I’m dedicating my lunch break to our blog 😉 .
Wow, those microlight flights are so cool! Do you think they have aircrafts for more than two persons? Otherwise we’ll have to take some lessons first! How was your trip to the library, found anything interesting?
I have been searching a little on skeptics’ websites (I thought that would be the best starting point for the skeptic girl 🙂 ). I’m not nearly finished, of course, but I found two book reviews of the (self-proclaimed) crop circle scientist we already saw in the You Tube video I posted last Sunday: Eltjo Haselhoff. Apparently, he published a few books about his scientific approach to researching and explaining crop circles and of course, one of these books was very critically reviewed by the skeptics’ websites I visited. I have to admit that I haven’t read Haselhoff’s books myself, so I cannot really say whether I agree with the skeptics. But they did raise some interesting issues which I would like to explore further.
The first review I read was published on the website of Skepp, a Flemish group of curious people who study “statements and phenomena that are highly unlikely or impossible according to the current state of the art in science”. It is a review about Haselhoff’s book called “Geheimzinnige graancirkels”. The first thing in the review that caught my attention was a couple of terms used to refer to people who study crop circles. That’s us!! Although Wikipedia adds to the definition: “especially one who believes that they are not man-made or formed by other terrestrial processes”. That’s not me. Apparently these people are called cereologists or croppies. So that’s another set of words to add to our search vocabulary. The main critique of Skepp on Haselhoff is that he claims to be a true scientist, while they doubt his scientific approach. They conclude that he doesn’t obey to many common scientific rules. Apparently, some of his hypotheses are based on very few observations and (more concerning), his experiments and tests were not done (double-) blind. An interesting problem that is explained is the fact that cereologists are trapped in a circlular argument. They study differences between ‘genuine’ and man-made crop circles to find explanations for the genuine crop circles. However, they don’t know which crop circles are genuine and which are man-made! Interesting thought…. The review ends with a list of common skeptics’ arguments for the hypothesis that all crop circles are man-made. This is quite an interesting list, you should read it! I recognized a lot of counter arguments used by croppies (love the term!!).
The second review I read I found on the Dutch counterpart of Skepp: Skepsis (what’s in a name?). Skepsis’ goal is “to critically study exceptional statements”. They reviewed the same book by Eltjo Haselhoff. Similar to Skepp, the Skepsis reviewer was impressed by the beautiful photos of crop circles. Also, they applaud the idea of approaching crop circle research from a scientific angle, as Haselhoff claims he does. However, Skepsis is also quite disappointed in the scientific explanations provided in the book. The largest part of the review was based on the mathematical and geometrical analyses and conclusions of Haselhof. As you know I am not a mathematician, so forgive me for any mistakes in interpreting Skepsis’ review, but if I understand the reviewer correctly, he used two methods to prove that Haselhoff’s analysis is not correct.
So, what should we conclude from this? I feel I should read Haselhoff’s book myself to decide whether I agree with the reviews. The Skepp review even suggests to buy this book if you’d want to read just one crop circle believers’ book because of the photographs and because Haselhoff is a bit more critical than many croppies. I have to say though, I liked the lines of reasoning from both reviewers! Also, I do feel somewhat more comfortable in refuting croppies’ arguments about why they believe many crop circles cannot be made by humans. There seem to be very plausible scientific explanations for many of the often mentioned phenomena.
A final interesting article (also by Skepsis) is a general review of Haselhoffs work and thoughts. Again, his scientific claims are seriously questioned, and I tend to agree with the skeptics here. Arguments Haselhoff is using just don’t seem right to a researcher such as myself. Two examples (from the article): Haselhoff apparently cannot imagine that one of the eye witnesses he spoke to was not telling the truth, and therefore what this eye witness saw is undeniably the truth. And my favourite: double-blind testing is a waist of time because good researchers are not influenced by any foreknowledge. Really!! Dees, even you don’t agree with this, or do you? 🙂
So please read the book review of Skepp and the article of Skepsis, I am so curious of what you think of it! Let me know!
Cheerio!
Karin
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Crop circle trip 2010 