Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

[Barry Karr <SkeptInq@AOL.COM>]

CONTACT: Kevin Christopher, CSICOP Public Relations Director
E-mail: mailto:press@csicop.org

CSICOP senior Research Fellow Joe Nickell will appear tonight (12/30) on the
Fox News Channel's "Fox Report," 7 and 8 pm ET US (program site:
http://www.foxnews.com/foxreport/index.html). Nickell was interviewed for a
segment on the "Solano [County, California] Crop Circles," to address recent
claims that the circles were the product of something other than human
hoaxers.

On the morning of June 28, 2003, Larry Balestra, a Solano County,
California, farmer, discovered crop circles in his wheat field. The
mysterious circles quickly became a local tourist attraction, with people
coming from hundreds of miles away to see them. Four local teenage boys
admitted to making them, inspired by a crop circles documentary and
summertime boredom. Incredibly, the boys found that visitors to the crop
circles refused to believe them, preferring to believe that aliens or some
paranormal phenomenon had made the geometric patterns.

On Wednesday, December 3, a self-styled team of researchers from
Psi-Applications released their report on the Solano circles and held a
press conference. "Crop circles are genuine mysteries that cannot be
explained by hoaxers," team member Michael Miley told the San Francisco
Chronicle. 

The team investigators claim that the Solano Circles pattern was too
sophisticated to be the work of the four teen hoaxers and insist that there
wasn't enough moonlight the night of June 27, 2003, to make the intricate
design. They also say that the nodes of wheat stalks taken from the circle
were larger than stalks from the surrounding crop, suggesting-they say-that
some sort of mysterious phenomenon, such as a blast of microwave energy, had
been at work.

Nickell, however, says that there is plenty of corroborative evidence to
back the boys' claims. They had a history of mischief and all four were on
probation. The mother of one boy confirms that the four arrived home in the
early morning hours of June 28, 2003, establishing a clear opportunity to
make crop circles in Balestra's fields. 

The boys had the proper circle-making tools, including a 75-foot rope and
"stalk stomper" devices (boards with rope attached) and blue tape. Only
after it was reported that they had blue tape in the July 14, 2003, Vallejo
Times-Herald, was the fact that Balestra's wife found bits of blue tape on
the scene published.

The teenagers claimed that there was little moonlight on the night in
question, which was the case. They showed a reporter a wrinkled paper with a
diagram of the formation. They exhibited first-hand knowledge, knowing that
wheat lies down easier than grass. 

"Far from disproving the teenagers' claims," Nickell says, "the self-styled
crop-circle experts have merely made up mysteries for some sensationalistic
publicity, employing faulty logic and pseudoscience. There is no credible
scientific evidence that aliens, microwave energies, wind vortexes, or other
mechanisms are responsible for the crop circles-only pranksters."