As promised in a previous issue your Editor hereby offers
himself for public flogging for all his Crimes Against Cereology.
For too long I have highlighted the crimes of others, their lies,
the deceptions and the belief-centred nonsense. Well, now its my
turn. Here it goes !
Looking back over my eight years of involvement with the crop
circle phenomenon I have to admit that I have very mixed feelings
about my achievements and failures. I don't think I can hide my
disappointment that so many crop circles turned out to be
man-made. Of course it would have been so so easy for me to adopt
that favourite position of the armchair Skeptics by saying
"I don't like the look of these circles, therefore they must
all be hoaxes", but don't believe what you may have read
elsewhere, that is not how science is conducted.
When I first became involved in circles research in late 1985
I quickly learnt from Jenny Randles that some circles were
definitely man-made. This fact always underlined my attitude
towards the subject and I took great care to ensure that I left
plenty of evidence to demonstrate this fact. I always knew that
some circles were hoaxes and I always considered it possible that
a great many circles might turn out to be hoaxes. Despite this it
is instructive to see that some observers (eg Robin Allen in The
Skeptic, and Jim Schnabel in Round in Circles) have
totally rewritten crop circle history to omit this fact, for
reasons best known to themselves. It was blindingly obvious to
anyone with the slightest grain of intelligence that peculiar
circular markings in fields could easily turn out to be man-made.
I said as much in my outrageous 1985 letter to the Editor at TVS
News in Southampton, when I dismissed all the Cheesefoot Head
circles as night-time hoaxes perpetrated by low flying helicopter
pilots !!
Despite my initial pro-hoax views I quickly became open to
alternative explanations when I was introduced to eye witness
testimony, historical crop circle cases and Ian Mrzyglod's work.
As so many of the early crop circles were relatively simple, and
as there were some precedents for what was happening, I soon
accepted that many circles might turn out to be meteorological in
origin. It was certainly my scientific duty to see just how far
this hypothesis could account for the evidence, and I am proud of
the fact that Jenny Randles and myself are the two primary
researchers who examined this theory and promoted it in the
public arena. Despite claims made by some observers, we always
disagreed with Meaden over the extent of hoaxing whilst giving
Meaden the benefit of the doubt. In the absence of strong pro
hoax evidence prior to circa 1990 I think we did the right thing.
In those early years I produced several published articles
promoting both hoaxing and meteorological explanations. As
speculation goes these articles were reasonable attempts at
trying to understand some complex issues. However, on reading
these articles now, seven years later, it is blindingly clear
that my biggest error in the 1986-89 period was my failure to
exhaustively test possible circle-making methods and to test
these methods on the established researchers (a la Wessex
Skeptics). By failing to do this I allowed myself to be swayed by
Meaden's atmospheric vortex theory to the point where I accepted
that many of the relatively simple formations I was seeing were
"genuine". Of course, evidence remains which suggests
that Meaden's theory is still valid for some cases, but it is
still disappointing to realise that I was as guilty of promoting
key falsehoods as everyone else. Of course, its easy with
hindsight, but I do have some excuses.
To begin with, I was the only active circle researcher living
in the Hampshire / Wiltshire area who was open to the idea that
perhaps many circles were hoaxes. To make experimental circles
would have been a difficult and risky business given the mystery
mongering of other well known pundits. The last thing Jenny and I
wanted to do was to help fan the flames of a silly season story,
something the New Scientist had already accused BUFORA
of doing in 1984. Of course, nothing could have been further from
the truth. BUFORA was the only serious research
organisation that had even bothered to investigate the
phenomenon, and we had already spoken out publicly about both
hoaxing and meteorology (something the official Skeptics have now
totally written out of crop circle history in their attempts to
debunk all crop circle researchers and all crop circle evidence).
As I was soon to discover, once that term UFO is associated with
an anomaly a very peculiar social reaction occurs whereby anyone
associated with that anomaly is deemed by the Skeptics to be in
league with the Devil ! If you don't believe this try reading
Robin Allen's vicious and inaccurate article in The Skeptic
!
During the mid 1980s Jenny Randles and myself demonstrated our
concern that many circles might be hoaxes by proposing several
methods of making crop circles. It was in response to our
discussion of these possible methods (in Mystery of the
Circles, BUFORA 1986) that the BBC twice hired
heli-copters and would-be circle makers to see what could be
created under test conditions. Again we have never received the
slightest degree of credit from the Skeptics for our suggestion
that researchers should attempt to replicate "genuine"
characteristics - something we were simply not resourced to do
ourselves.
Looking back on those crucial early years I believe now that
we were both severely misled by the poor quality of the 1983
Westbury hoax, where hoaxers left damaged crop despite making
their circles in broad daylight. This event substantially reduced
our expectations of what hoaxers could do at night, particularly
given the extensive experimentation into methods of making crop
circles which Pat Delgado discussed at the "Open
Meeting" held in Alresford. The failings of this evidence
mislead us all for years. Despite this, we discussed hoaxing in
virtually all our written work and in almost all our media
interviews. It is sad to see that our concern with hoaxing at
this early stage in the development of the mythology has
subsequently been totally written out of the history of the
subject.
Looking back I can see all too clearly what went wrong. One of
the characteristics of anomaly research is that the moment an
anomaly is labelled and identified an incredibly emotive debate
is generated where both proponents and Skeptics adopt extreme
polarised positions. I saw this happening from a very early stage
and was quite powerless to stop it. On the one hand we had the Flying
Saucer Review team insisting that crop circles could not be
hoaxes and just had to be the result of an alien controlled
force, whilst on the other hand the official Skeptics were
insisting that crop circles were not the result of an alien
intelligence and just had to be hoaxes ! There was no middle
ground, no reasoned argument about the facts, no understanding
that in science several anomalies can often be lumped together
under one explanatory heading.
During this very early stage I was thrown into a vipers nest,
forced to decide whether the public debate over the cause of the
circles was more important than the actual investigation of the
circles. Deciding which of these two options to take was probably
the most difficult choice Jenny Randles and I faced, but
ultimately I suppose we tried to do both, with the inevitable
result that we failed to fulfil both aims. We allowed the crop
circle mythology to develop into a world-wide hoax whilst at the
same time we failed to fully test all hoaxing methods. Of course
its one thing to discuss numerous possible circle making methods
in print but quite another to actually try those methods in the
classic scientific manner.
By failing to construct circles I was not only guilty of
misunderstanding what experienced hoaxers could create at night
but I was also guilty of promoting the myth that "bent but
not broken" was synonymous with the "genuine"
phenomenon, something which has now been proven to be untrue on
numerous well-documented occasions. I regard these two errors as
my primary mistakes. However, the fact that I was all on my own,
both physically and philosophically, meant that the opportunity
to test these methods and assumptions about what hoaxers could
and could not do was always restricted, particularly given my
lack of time and resources.
Being asthmatic I imagine that I might be capable of making
say a 10 foot diameter circle on my own, but even this would have
left me totally exhausted and feeling pretty awful for some time
afterwards. Making several circles to "test" the
leading researchers would have been a physically challenging
task. Of course, there were no official Skeptics or Magonians
around to assist me or to suggest further avenues for research -
they were too busy sitting at home watching TV !
In the early years I did visit crop circles, but as many
appeared in the Cheesefoot Head punchbowl and as this area was
allegedly out-of-bounds to researchers, I never went inside the
Cheesefoot punchbowl circles - I merely trusted the abilities of
my fellow researchers (something our oh-so-clever Skeptics have
never realised !). Had I actually visited these early circles I
would have discovered Matthew Lawrence's observation that many of
these "pristine" circles exhibited damaged crop, muddy
footprints and suspicious underlying tracks (something other
researchers cleverly managed to miss or cover-up). I did notice a
lot of damage in the 1987 South Wonston circle but I wrongly
concluded that because it was so close to the road and housing
that it had been damaged by subsequent visitors. Would be
researchers note - you can't do your research from a car parked
at the edge of the field and you can't assume that the evidence
you examine is uncontaminated - it normally is !
Looking back on this period I realise now that as Andrews and
Delgado became increasingly outspoken about the circles they were
finding, I drew back realising (with utter horror) what they were
going to do. My caution and concern about their activities
actually led to me distance myself from the research and
investigation that I should have been doing. This is not to say
that I didn't visit circles at all - I certainly did - but the
fear that I would find myself in the middle of a field with two
people I deeply mistrusted had a strong negative effect on what I
should have been doing.
During these early years, as Doug and Dave began making
circles across a progressively wider area, I was severely
restricted in terms of time and money. It wasn't until late 1985
that I had my first car and I well recall trampling up from the
Percy Hobbs bus stop in July 1985 searching for my first circles
(a quintuplet on Gander Down). It was a frustrating experience.
However, even when I joined forces with Terence Meaden in 1986,
it wasn't long before the Wiltshire hoaxers began hoaxing and
many of their circles were a good hour or two away from my home.
Unlike many other circle researchers, I was unwilling to allow my
spare time hobby to interfere with my career with frequent
nocturnal trips and circle-watching activities. I think this
attitude was perfectly reasonable as there were others who were
doing the basic investigation and I had high hopes that the
phenomenon would soon be satisfactorily explained to the public
at large.
Little did I know how those pretty little circles I was
visiting would turn into a Great Filthy Hoax which would spread
out around the world bringing wealth to a few but disaster to
others. Looking back on it all now I wonder what would have
happened had I done the correct thing - given up my job and
camped out with a pair of infra-red binoculars in the copse half
way down Cheesefoot Head. What would have happened had I seen
Doug and Dave coming down the hillside to make a formation ?
Would I have been brave enough to tackle two complete strangers
in the middle of the night a mile from the nearest habitation ?
Would I have been able to persuade these two men to stop their
circle-making on the basis that they were helping others to
discredit "serious" UFO research (no, don't laugh) ?
Who would have believed me if I had obtained this
"proof" that their precious circles were actually
man-made ? Would Andrews and Delgado have stopped their reckless
promotion of the subject if I had proven to them that one of
their "genuine" circles was really man made ? Would
other hoaxers have stopped what they were doing ? Somehow I doubt
it, and we can just imagine the official Skeptics recompensing me
for the loss to my career such actions would have entailed.
Those early years were deeply frustrating. I remember having
an almost permanent headache in the summer of 1987 as I saw what
was happening. How could I stop what Andrews and Delgado were
doing ? I was desperate to convince them to think again about
their extraordinary interpretation of the evidence, but they
simply ignored the evidence I sent to them and in the end they
forced me into a position where I was left with no choice but to
publicly slate them for what they were saying and doing,
something I had hoped to avoid with my letters to them.
It shocked me to see the way Andrews and Delgado were
promoting an extraterrestrial solution to the evidence without
the slightest regard for more mundane explanations or the
credibility of UFOlogy. I tried on several occasions to convince
them to think again, but in the end this just made for more
trouble in a very big way. It was during this period that I would
have valued some help from the more rational elements of the UFO
community - perhaps from those clever know-alls at Magonia or
even the official Skeptics - but instead I was left to do
everything myself. Of course in real life the cavalry never come
just in the nick of time, yet now these very same people are the
ones who are criticising and jeering ! What cowards they were !
So, now it is all over. I witnessed the birth of a social
myth, a new religion, another extension to the overpowering UFO
mythology. It was as if I had been there in the late 1940s when
Ray Palmer and his associates invented the UFO myth with their
fraudulent promotion of Schirmer's fictional story about aliens
kidnapping humans into their underground bases. I saw the way in
which the public were lied to, repeatedly, and how the British
media, with its exceptional arrogance and stupidity, gave a
handful of extra-terrestrialists everything they needed to
promote themselves as world famous researchers. I can never
forgive these people for what they did. They put UFO research
back by fifty years with their actions.
Looking back on it all I don't think there is much more I
could have done. Having made my two main errors I don't think I
had the resources to work out what was really happening. I don't
think I could have stopped the world-wide hoaxing that has
developed. I don't feel that UFOlogy deserves much credit for the
way in which believer groups like FSR and Quest International
leapt to support Andrews and Delgado in what they were saying.
These people were all UFO Traitors who cared for nothing except
their own bloated egos and their money-making activities. History
will recall them as such. I know because I was there.
So, what about my successes ? Well I suppose Jenny Randles and
myself were in there investigating crop circles, analysing the
evidence and publishing our research before the Skeptics had even
got out of bed ! We were always alert to the idea that many
circles might be hoaxes and we were always prepared to accept a
dual solution of hoaxing and meteorology. In this respect we
differed from almost all the other crop circle researchers who
had already nailed their loyalties to single masts. Of course
science often requires dual theories and we were right to adopt
such an approach. I suppose we had five main achievements :
(1) We challenged the popular myth that crop circles
were the result of a spaceships' landing marks. We countered FSR's
falsehoods in the public domain in the belief that the public
were being led down the garden path (something the official
Skeptics kept well clear of). Our aim was to give the public the
facts that others chose not to. In doing this perhaps we opened
some eyes in the scientific community that not all UFO
researchers are maniacs, that UFOs are neither spaceships or
nonsense, that in some cases obscure but objectively real
phenomena may lie behind those reports.
(2)We suggested experiments to test hoaxing methods and
we published evidence about hoaxing (eg in Mystery of the
Circles, BUFORA 1986). We were the only researchers
who even considered that hoaxing might account for crop circles -
a stance which soon bought us ridicule and despicable tactics
from some of the other self proclaimed researchers who had
attached themselves to the subject.
(3) We tried to rescue some credit for UFOlogy, as we
very quickly saw the potential for the crop circles to totally
discredit the serious side of UFO research (as well as the
historical evidence, which we always felt was possibly more
representative of the true phenomenon than the more outrageous
hoaxes which others were eagerly promoting). This was one of the
reasons behind our aggressive public stance against those who
accepted without question that crop circles were caused by
spaceships. In my opinion our best media achievements were
- the 9 July 1989 article in The Times, which
challenged the FSR team for its unprofessional dismissal
of eye witness testimony and the extent of hoaxing (another
crucially important media quote which the Skeptics totally ignore
with their rewritten crop circle history);
- the item on the ITV network news in 1989 when ITN science
Editor Lawrence McGinty promoted Meaden's meteorological theory
and hoaxing as the solution (ditto) - I remember dancing around
my flat with joy after that one !;
- our part in the 1986 and 1989 BUFORA debates, which
were an attempt to stimulate a proper scientific debate which
(tellingly) the Flying Saucer Review team and the official
Skeptics never reciprocated, but which bought us credit from
scientists like Dr Paul Mason at the Met. Office in Bracknell, -
and
- my first solo "live" TV interview, where I
discussed eye witness testimony and hoaxing before Doug and Dave
came forward (TVS News, 19th July 1990).
(4) We also did things that no other crop circle
researchers did, eg we conducted surveys, examined historical
cases and we published all the pro-hoax evidence (years before
Doug and Dave came forward). In effect we evaluated ALL the data,
proposed quantifiable hypotheses and continually emphasised our
belief that there was a rational explanation for the phenomenon.
We took a particular interest in the sociology of what was taking
place. In short we witnessed the birth of a new supernatural
mythology - a subject of study in its own right. Despite Robin
Allen's ludicrous comments in The Skeptic we spent many
hundreds of unpaid hours of our spare time circulating crop
circle evidence to researchers all over the world. Science would
have expected nothing less of us.
(5) We took Meaden's controversial meteorological
theory and used it to try and explain numerous high strangeness
UFO reports. This approach is something that proper scientists
should still be doing, although the Skeptics have treated this
work with utter contempt whilst failing to explain why these
explanations are (apparently) so wrong. In my view this is work
that deserves to be continued, regardless of the jeers of the
Skeptics, whose failure to properly falsify scientific evidence
is legion. Note that none of these things were ever done by the
official Skeptics, who avoided the crop circle debate for ten
long years. Presumably the Skeptics' failure to contribute to
circles research was largely due to a fear that they might be
wrong ! Yet now opinionated know-alls like Robin Allen are
actually trying to claim the credit for having exposed mass crop
circle hoaxing ! To summarise I think any future historian of the
subject who works through my 30 box files of crop circle
material, my media interviews and my published work is going to
have a tough old time trying to evaluate my
"contribution" to the subject. I think the real problem
is that I could never really made up my mind whether what I was
seeing was hoaxed or genuine. I never had the time and money to
do everything I wanted. I know I got a lot of things quite wrong,
but I also got some things right. To be dismissed by Robin Allen
as just another True Believer in the mysterious circles is
perhaps the final insult in the long and troubled history of our
subject.
