ABC Books 1994, 248 pages, numerous b&w diagrams and photographs, not currently on general sale but a few research copies may still be available from ABC Books, PO Box 189, Leigh-on-Sea, Essex SS9 1NF.
Following on from his previous crop circle book The
Circlemakers Andy Collins has now produced a limited edition
of Alien Energy, a highly controversial summary and
interpretation of the Orgone '93 and '94 projects. Never one to
baulk at strange concepts and peculiar claims Collins treads
where other researchers fear to go. In Alien Energy Collins
claims to have uncovered evidence that "unknown aerial
phenomena and lightforms are the outer manifestations of a more
primary energy" which was "scientifically isolated in
the 1930s by Austrian-born biophysicist Wilhelm Reich". This
previously unknown energy force is "recognised today by
quantum physicists as the multi-dimensional superforce or unified
field".
These are highly controversial claims, but Collins goes even
further. Apparently this "pre-atomic energy continuum, or
matrix, is responsible for the many strange effects so often
reported in connection with ancient and sacred sites, crop
circles (whether man-made or otherwise) and Reich's orgone energy
accumulator". These energetic states "provide a perfect
garden, or gateway, in which trans-dimensional intelligences can
penetrate space-time and catalyse psycho-interactive
confrontations, including the so-called alien abduction
experience".
Alien Energy seems a very apt title for Collins' book,
as to this reviewer's knowledge no reputable scientists have ever
demonstrated the existence of the "multi-dimensional
superforce" described by Collins, let alone linked such a
force to highly controversial anomaly claims associated with
man-made crop circles and luminous UFOs. Nevertheless this is not
to say that Alien Energy doesn't contain some
thought-provoking ideas and concepts. One thing which Collins
cannot be criticised for is his tenacity and willingness to take
a hypothesis and go out in the field and test that hypothesis
exhaustively. Throughout Alien Energy Collins displays this
admirable quality over and over again. We can count on just one
hand the number of British UFOlogists prepared to spend time and
money out in the field testing their theories. One might not
agree with what Collins concludes from his experimentation (this
reviewer certainly doesn't) but to form hypotheses, design
experiments and conduct those experiments - all on a wafer-thin
budget - deserves the highest praise. Another thing which Collins
should take credit for is the concept of producing a
research-only limited edition of Alien Energy. By doing
this Collins cannot be accused of being involved in his Orgone
Projects just for profit, a claim which has been made in the past
by more than one author.
Reviewing this book poses major difficulties for a reviewer.
On the one hand Collins presents a wide range of new evidence -
more historic crop circle cases, further eye witness testimony,
possible folklore parallels with modern anomaly events - this is
all good work and deserves praise. On the other Alien Energy
suffers from some unfortunate errors of fact. On page 216 Collins
mistakenly attributes Alan Godfrey's close encounter claim to
Tony Dodd. On page 99 I was surprised to see Collins promote
Billy Meier's hoaxed photographs of alien spaceships. I have to
admit that I am not fully convinced of Collins' decision to
promote figure 3 on page 35. Whilst this appears to be a genuine
Victorian account of a crop circle associated with the Devil
Collins omits to point out that the engraving has also been
promoted alongside the Young Telegraph's cartoon of Doug and
Dave. To this reviewer this suggests that Figure 3 is a clever
modern invention, not a genuine Victorian engraving depicting a
19th century crop circle.
One of the most surprising claims made in Alien Energy
concerns the accusations which have been made about insider
hoaxing in the crop circle research groups. In the covering
letter circulated with Alien Energy Collins claims that:
"... I have considered all post 1976 crop circles and formations as man-made and do not see the strange effects surrounding them as the result of whatever force (stomper, roller or otherwise) created them in the first place".
Collins appears to contradict this statement by challenging
some widely-accepted assumptions about the true extent of crop
circle hoaxing in the Beckhampton area. I have to say that I
would like to see a few more photographs of historical crop
circles before definitely supporting Collins' claim that
"very few" of the historical crop circle cases listed
in The Crop Watcher and elsewhere are "unlikely"
to be man-made (page 32). Neither can this reviewer accept
Collins' claim that, in fact, the 1991 Barbury Castle formation
may not have been man-made (eg on page 236). A quick call to
Circlevision would have established the true depth of evidence
surrounding the "rumour" of the suspiciously parked
cars (page 236). Unfortunately Collins forgets that this reviewer
definitely recalls hearing the story of the suspiciously parked
cars within days of the appearance of the "mother of all
hoaxes" (see CW21
page 18). This mistake allows Collins to claim that the
"rumour" didn't surface until "several
months" later !
In this reviewer's opinion one of the major errors of
judgement in this book concerns Collins' apparent acceptance of
the U.B.I.'s recent claim of innocence in the light of
allegations of circlemaking published in 1991 and 1992 by Irving
and Schnabel. This seems a classic case of being too close to the
evidence to be able to sit back and think critically. It seems
incredible, in the light of the numerous named circle-makers
operating in the Beckhampton area, that Collins can seriously
champion Paul Randall's evolving claim that in fact the U.B.I.
only ever made one and a half circles. Although Collins accepts
in his letter (see page 20) that the U.B.I. admitted on tape to
having added extras to the pre-existing dumb-bell at Avebury
Trusloe in 1991 and that they were seen making a huge 400 foot
long formation (in 5 foot tall rapeseed with thick brittle stems)
at Urchfont in 1992, he seems to misunderstand the fact that for
Irving and Schnabel to have their articles accepted for
publication by The Independent Magazine there must have been much
more evidence than that which appeared in print (your Editor
currently has access to some of this unpublished evidence, which
will appear in future issues of The Crop Watcher).
Critics of Collins' perspective should ask themselves the
following question. If the U.B.I. are really so innocent of the
charges which were levelled against them why did they wait two
years before publicly challenging the claims made in Irving and
Schnabel's articles in The Independent ? If you had been
falsely accused of having made numerous crop circles in the
national press would you wait two years before speaking out in
your defence and demanding an apology ?
Collins' apparent reluctance to pursue the evidence uncovered
by Irving and Schnabel in 1991/92 is perhaps one of the most
important criticisms which can be made of Alien Energy.
Robert Irving claims that although he spoke to Collins on one or
two occasions prior to Collins circulating his pre release
version of Alien Energy Collins failed to question him
further about the evidence he and Schnabel obtained which
persuaded the Editor of The Independent magazine to
publish their expose of the UBI's activities. According to Irving
neither did Collins send Irving a copy of the pre-publication
version of Alien Energy which was circulated to a number
of prominent researchers for comment and criticism prior to
publication. Irving says that he left details about his balloon
experiments on Collins' answering machine but that Collins failed
to get back to him.
Collins' treatment of the "disco lights" incident on
Urchfont Hill on the night of 26/27th July 1992 (pages 236-7) is
also revealing. Both this reviewer and CERES' Peter
Rendall were present in the Knap Hill car park that evening and
can recall the night's events with alarming clarity. We could all
see a strong laser light show in the Longleat House area (20
miles to the SW). Suddenly strong light beams shot up from much
closer. Rendall drove towards the lights (a distance of
approximately 6 miles) and followed them to Urchfont Hill. As he
drove up a track towards the lights a grey estate car passed him,
stopped, reversed back to take a closer look at Rendall's car,
then speeded away towards Devizes (home of several alleged
hoaxers - including members of the UBI). Rendall was unable to
pin down the exact location of the light beams on Urchfont Hill
but was struck by the similarity between the car he encountered
and one hired by a member of the CSETI team. It is true
that later that night the weather closed in and visibility became
reduced, but prior to midnight this reviewer clearly recalls
seeing the Urchfont Hill lights from Knap Hill. Irving presents a
further objection to Collins' synopsis in the box on page 18.
In this reviewer's opinion Collins has inadvertently allowed
the True Believers the opportunity of resurrecting the fraudulent
social mythology inspired by Andrews and Delgados' Circular
Evidence some years after 99 % of the population of the world
laughed and turned their attention to other more pressing
matters. The fact that all the well known crop circle researchers
have accepted that the data is hopelessly contaminated with
hoaxing is treated as an irrelevance in Collins' somewhat flawed
analysis.
A more fundamental problem with Collins' hypothesis arises
over his controversial acceptance of the use of so-called
"orgone accumulators". According to Wilhelm Reich's
original work, orgone accumulators consist of alternating layers
of metallic and organic material (usually wool or celotex). In
each case the metallic layer must be positioned on the inside of
the accumulator (to attract and then repel "orgone"
energy). In Alien Energy Collins correctly describes how
such accumulators are made, but then draws on John Michell's
suggestion that prehistoric monuments like Silbury Hill are, in
fact, giant orgone accumulators. It seems to this reviewer that
Collins is not comparing "like with like", for Silbury
Hill consists of alternating layers of organic and non organic
layers, not alternating layers of metallic and organic layers.
I must admit that I was disappointed at Collins' failure to
track down independent meteoro-logical records of the strange
effects alleged to have resulted from Reich's controversial
experiments detailed in chapter 1, despite my suggestion that he
do so in order to strengthen Reich's claims to have disturbed
local environ-mental conditions with his Orgone experimentation.
The whole Orgone story is expertly summarised by Collins but
Reich's Orgone work reeks of pseudo-scientific nonsense. It
should be recalled that Reich was primarily a psycho-analyst. His
expertise in physics seems highly questionable. It seems
remarkable that Reich's team could obtain radioactive substances
and experiment with them in the manner described. This reviewer
wonders if the alleged interest of the US military in Reich's
experiments was similar in some way to the 1947 Maury Island
incident, recently exposed by UFOlogist John Keel as the cover-up
of illegal dumping of radioactive waste by the US Atomic Energy
Commission (at a time when it was not fully appreciated how
damaging such dumping can be to the environment). Could Reich's
peculiar use of radioactive material be linked in the same way to
the alleged interest of the US military in his experimentation ?
About one third of the book - the middle third - is taken up
with a long detailed description of the numerous experiments
conducted in and around the Alton Barnes area in 1993 and 1994 by
Collins' team and by other groups operating semi-independently.
As a statistician with postgraduate training in experimental
design methods I have to say that all these projects suffer from
poor experimental design. Collins' hypotheses - that the use of
meditational arche-types can affect local environmental
con-ditions (including the generation of light forms and other
anomalous phen-omena) combines far too many variables and is
sensitive to too many external factors to be capable of
statistically identifying real experimental effects that might be
causally related to Reich's controversial Orgone Energy.
One problem with Collins' experimental design is that any true
experimental effects will be masked by numerous random effects
triggered by external factors (eg solar insolation, humidity, air
temperature). These effects will also be masked by interaction
effects caused when one variable combines with another. Collins
occasionally discusses some of the external factors - eg the
effect of cloud cover on local radiation rates - but there is not
enough control over these external factors and not enough data to
analyse Collins' data properly, let alone make the strong
inferences claimed by Collins.
In this reviewer's professional opinion it would have been
better to conduct a single repetitive experiment examining the
effect of just one type of experiment on just one variable eg by
measuring the effect of meditation on radiation counts and
conducting say 20 experiments at the same site at the same time
of the day (keeping a record of weather conditions). The person
measuring the radiation count should not be involved with the
experiment and should not know the nature of the hypotheses being
tested (ie it should be a blind test). Neither should the
experimenters know that they are supposed to be increasing the
radiation count (ie a double blind test).
Throughout Alien Energy Collins can be criticised for
conducting a poor statistical analysis of his data. There are
several examples of this problem. Collins' failure to record the
y axis labels produces highly misleading inferences from the
graphs on pages 133, 143, 144, 155, 166-168, 170. It is easy for
a non statistician to fall into the trap of believing that they
have discovered something statistically significant simply
because they have drawn their line charts wrongly. Hales'
"cumulative summing method" is not a standard
statistical procedure with data of this type and I believe that
Collins draws incorrect statistical conclusions by adopting this
method.
It is wrong to simply quote statistical results from
experiments without conducting inferential tests of the
statistical significance of the results. The one occasion this is
done (page 134) the test result of "one in 5,000" is
irrelevant to what is being claimed. A visual examination of
Figure 20 confirms that the "one in 5,000" reading of
141 is nearly reached on several occasions prior to the first
meditation (ie during the control period). Clearly Collins'
estimate is in error.
Throughout Alien Energy there are numerous examples of
what might merely be described as false causality, eg on p166
"just thinking about the intentions of the forthcoming
meditation is enough for the human mind to affect the apparatus
being used in the experiment". Well actually (1) the graphs
don't necessarily show statistically significant differences
between control and meditational periods, and (2) in six of the
eight graphs the radiation counts were already rising prior to
the meditational sessions. This classic example of false
causality can be demonstrated by recording and illustrating the
natural variations in background radiation counts for a much
longer period prior to the experiment beginning.
In this reviewer's opinion it is debatable whether it was
right of Collins and his team to choose the Alton Barnes location
for their experimentation given the phenomenal concentration of
hoaxing, allegations of hoaxing, allegations of complicity
between circlemakers and local farmers, UFO hoaxing (eg Irving's
balloon experiments) and the general level of wishful thinking
amongst the numerous individuals mentioned throughout the book.
Nowhere is this better demonstrated than in Collins' acceptance
that virtually every light seen in the sky must be a genuine
anomaly. Collins should know better than this, following his many
years experience as a reputable UFO researcher. In this sentence
we have perhaps the crux of the Alien Energy debate. How
much credibility can we place on the many and varied accounts of
anomalous phenomena reported in this book ? In this reviewer's
opinion, precious few.
A fine example of this problem is an account of how one
witness allegedly encountered a small ball of light whilst
driving away from the Alton Barnes area. This reviewer has been
reliably informed that on a previous occasion this same witness
misidentified the moon shining through scattered clouds for a
period of fifteen minutes as "a mothership". A similar
criticism can be made of Collins' failure to investigate the
known effects of pesticides and fungicides on people, effects
which could well account for many of the claims made on pages
41-43 - i.e. they could just be normal allergic reactions.
Above all Collins seems to misunderstand that the Beckhampton
area is a sociological focus for strong social forces akin to the
Warminster events of the 1960s and 1970s. In this respect it
seems that nothing has been learnt from the lessons of UFO
history.
This reviewer would love to believe that Collins' work has
produced evidence of some obscure kind of natural mechanism which
creates objectively real light phenomena in addition to peculiar
physiological effects capable of being interpreted according to
preconceived religious belief systems. This would help explain so
much of the unexplained anomaly evidence and would be a major
breakthrough. Sadly I do not believe that Alien Energy
presents strong evidence to support this contention. Better luck
next time !
