Comments from ALAN DAY on the Discovery Science TV programme in which MIT students construct a crop circle...


It was interesting to see the article in the summer headlines section regarding the documentary shown on Discovery Science about a group of MIT students making a crop circle.

I have seen this programme a few times as I get satellite TV, but found myself losing interest as it droned on about these not-so-clever MIT students making a very basic crop circle (compared to most genuine formations), instead of concentrating on the phenomena itself. These TV showcases always give far too much time to corn crunchers instead of focusing on the real phenomenon. There is no mention of the geometry involved - sacred or otherwise - and also we
see no pictures of the crop lay. One can imagine that it would have been very messy, with students trampling around in the crop for four hours. These efforts are always constructed well away from the eyes of crop circle researchers who can give a proper and fair judgment. This means we only have MIT students, who know nothing about crop circles, judging the work of MIT undergraduates, who also know nothing about crop circles, which invalidates the whole experiment. The film also mentions that the pilot lost control of his helicopter when they were flying over the formation (???). Of course, we only have the pilot’s word for it. Is this more disinformation to put the idea in people's minds that man-made formations can also cause strange effects similar to those observed in the genuine ones?