Hi Dees,
No trip to Bloemendaal & Haarlem this weekend, unfortunately. Eise caught the flu (and an additional ear infection) and I’m not feeling too well either. So I thought this was a good moment to start reading some of the supposedly scientific research into crop circles myself.
But before I got to reading the articles, I found a nice review on W.C. Levengood’s crop circle research. This review addresses two issues I’ve mentioned before, the lack of double blind testing and the circular reasoning (“Although there are no guaranteed genuine formations on which to conduct research, the research supposedly proves the genuineness of the formations.”). Besides these two points, the author (Joe Nickell, Senior Research Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), how cool does that sound!) also points to a fact I hadn’t even realised myself, namely that the correlation Levengood finds between structural and cellular alterations in plants and their location within crop-circle-type formations does not at all show a causal relationship. Of course! This reminds me to something I read earlier, that stalks that have been bent grow longer nodes (one of the signs of a “genuine” crop circle, according to Levengood and other croppies) because they simply have to elevate themselves again.
Just another nice skeptical read! 😉
By the way, I’m quite curious about Karlo’s opinion on crop circles and our blog, couldn’t you push him to leave a comment??
Bye, Karin
Crop circle trip 2010 