Crop Circles

Resources and articles
A crop circle is a sizable pattern created by the flattening of a crop such as wheat, barley, rye, maize, or rapeseed.

On the night of July 11–12, 1992 a crop-circle making competition, for a prize of three thousand UK pounds (partly funded by the Arthur Koestler Foundation), was held in Berkshire. The winning entry was produced by three Westland Helicopters engineers, using rope, PVC pipe, a plank, string, a telescopic device and two stepladders. According to Rupert Sheldrake the competition was organised by him and John Michell and "co-sponsored by The Guardian and The Cerealogist". The prize money came from PM, a German magazine. Sheldrake wrote that "The experiment was conclusive. Humans could indeed make all the features of state-of-the-art crop formations at that time. Eleven of the twelve teams made more or less impressive formations that followed the set design. wiki

Criticism

 * Hempstead, Martin. "The Summer of '91," Skeptic (UK), vol 5, no 6 (1991)
 * Huston, Peter. Scams from the Great Beyond : How to Make Easy Money Off of Esp, Astrology, Ufos, Crop Circles, Cattle Mutilations, Alien Abductions, Atlantis, Channeling, and other New Age Nonsense (Paladin Press, 1997).
 * Nickel, Joe. "The Crop Circle Phenomenon: An Investigative Report," in The Skeptical Inquirer (Winter, 1992).
 * Schnabel, Jim, Round In Circles: Physicists, Poltergeists, Pranksters and the Secret History of the Cropwatchers (Penguin: London, 1994).

Related Sourcewatch

 * Jim Lyons
 * Colin Andrews
 * Baroness Edmee di Pauli
 * Laurence Rockefeller