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From: Jenny Randles <nufon@currantbun.com>
Date: Mon, 5 Jul 1999 16:07:03 +0100
Fwd Date: Mon, 05 Jul 1999 16:54:22 -0400
Subject: Re: Doug and Dave


Hi,

Whilst I have been away doing ufology in Washington (no - it
wasn't a holiday - I got about five hours free to see DC thats
all) I note how the debate on Doug and Dave and crop circles has
hotted up. Rather like Washington did last weekend, both with
sweltering weather and some of the hot air emerging at the MUFON
conference (although there was some very good stuff too which
filled quite a few pages of my notebook).

Anyway, I wanted to give my take on this as someone who was
involved in circles from around l981 (before any of the names
referred to in one of last weeks e mails bar Meaden). The point
was made that cerealogists were not faking circles in the l990's
but were just insisting they could not be done by humans whilst
trying to flog books.

First point is that we at BUFORA rapidly made clear to all our
investigators that faking circles was a sackable offence. It was
against our code of practice governing how we intereact with the
public and one clause regarding damage to property. Whatever the
intention hoaxing a circle is a criminal act and we were very
clear at BUFORA not to either condone nor encourage that. So
this was not something merely 'never done'.

It is also not quite true that circle researchers were claiming
humans could not do it. Ian Mrzyglod, Paul Fuller and I (who
between us in the early/mid/late 80's - beginning even before
anyone had heard of Andrews and Delgado) were exposing hoaxers
across the UK and writing about it. Ian found the first big one
in l983. In l986 Paul and I co-edited the first ever publication
on the topic for BUFORA ('Mystery of the Circles') - later
expanded to 'Controversy of the Circles' and our mass market
(well - book - mass market is certainly pushing it as few have
ever heard of it!)  - 'Crop Circles: A mystery solved?'  In each
of these we increasingly emphasised the role of hoaxing from a
little to a fair bit and ultimately to a lot as its extent
became obvious. We devote chapters to the subject. We cannot be
fairly accused of ignoring it. All of this predated the arrival
of Doug and Dave. Indeed, by wonderful irony the day the Doug &
Dave story broke in the UK I was in Australia flying to Cairns
to look into the l966 Tully case that these guys later stated
was their inspiration!

At a public symposium to launch our strategy in London (hosted
by Mike Wootten - who had a big hand in this early work too)
BUFORA brought together for the only time ever all the key
people - Meaden, Andrews, Delgado, and, of course, our BUFORA
team. We also invited the serious media and got good stories in
the likes of the Telegraph, as I recall. We then staged a full
debate and had an audience vote. The audience supported the
stance that Paul and I put forward for BUFORA based on our work.
Circles were the result of two things - a natural atmospheric -
weather based - force and hoaxing, the extent of which was
likely to be greater than suspected. That such an open vote on
hoaxing was taken 13 years ago is something few of you seem to
have any recall about.

This remarkable event - a triumph for serious ufology - was
three years before the media discovered circles in a big way,
'Circular Evidence' appeared and the furore began. It has been
utterly ignored by 'scholars' of crop circles and rarely even
gets a mention anywhere and figures in few supposedly well
researched history books. Of course, our objective approach was
seen as anathema. I suggest you check what Creighton said in
Flying Saucer Review around that time where he abused, ridiculed
and frankly libelled Paul and I to high heaven as he apparently
could not perceive our research in the terms that it was
conducted. That hurt me as I had been very closely involved with
FSR for a decade when Charles Bowen was editor. I attended board
meetings, dealt with admin work and was working to build a
bridge that linked BUFORA's NIC with FSR to provide objective
UFO reporting in their pages. All that went out of the window
when Creighton reacted with horror at our position on circles.

So I take exception to the suggestion that this kind of rational
work did not happen. It did and for not the only time BUFORA
stood tall, did a good job and got dumped on from a great height
for doing so. Now all those brave efforts are being expunged
from memory as if it is too awful to think they really happened!
Sorry but they did. Maybe we should get ufology to a regression
hypnosis expert to trawl through the screen memories implanted
over the truth?

I met Ian Mrzyglod in February for the first time in several
years. He was driven out of ufology by  the stupid, callous way
his hard work was treated by others. He feels nothing much has
changed since . I worry that ufology is in danger of losing
another great asset - Paul Fuller - for similar reasons as he
must have better things to do than this.

As for Doug & Dave. I was personally satisfied by them that they
created a few circles, but probably nothing like the hundreds
the media alleged. They themselves never suggested they made
even more than a small fraction of them all. the media - as ever
- hyped their role to make it into a story. It always was a
cummulative effort involving dozens of people from the cynical
trickster to the 'lets have a spot of fun' brigade that became
like a snowball rolling down a hill. It gathered pace and size
the minute many people first took the hoaxes seriously and the
media began to report them.

It is possible that there are genuine, even complex, circles. I
accept that but am not convinced . The trouble is the hoaxing
madness has left the field so full of spurious data that it is
virtually worthless chasing case after case. Thats the main
reason I dropped any pretence at investigating circles about
l993. Whilst the phenomenon has the culture that it has today
then it will create far too many red herrings to make study more
than just a hopeless search through tall tales . If and when
this craziness dies away I may return.  But there are better
ways to spend your time right now.

As stated earlier, Doug & Dave claim they got the idea to make
circles from the reed bed swirl at Tully, Queensland in l966.
They admit they did not make this mark. I found strong evidence
in Australia that no human did. These circles (for there were
several more than the one D & D knew about via the press in Oz
at the time) appeared in inhospitable terrain far from prying
eyes. No hoaxer would have been mad enough to dare the deadly
taipan snakes to fake them. And there was an aboriginal
tradition of glowing lights tied in with the stories.

One of the things that Paul and I did post D & D was reason
thus. Hoaxing was clearly rife regardless of how many and of
what kind D & D made. The media farce was ensuring that there
was a huge incentive. So we decided to seek out any known
examples of circles pre both the invention of the term 'crop
circle' (and thus any publicity for it) - ie l980 - and the
first alleged crude hoaxes by D & D about five years before
that.

We scoured many sources, from scientific journals, to UFO
archives and Paul did a brilliant job of tracking down land
survey aerial photpographs of the UK from earlier this century
hunting out suspicious anomalies.

The result? Sufficient cases, both of actual circles and
eye-witnesses to their formation, to prove to our satisfactions
that a small level of circle activity has always occurred. We
found circles, by the way, in many mediums. Crop fields simply
record them semi-permanently better than most for technical
reasons. But there have been good examples in grass, sand, snow,
ice, hay, dust and even wet road surfaces.  Tully - as noted -
was matted reeds atop a waterlogged region.

However, here's the rub. All of the pre D & D circles and all of
the eye witness accounts of formation related to single, simple
circles. There were no complex patterns and certainly no
pictograms. Such was the bias that it seemed suggestive of only
one thing.

Conclusion? We decided it this way. There was a phenomenon
creating the simple circles and it always has done so. It can
generate spin off UFOs too. We show this, I believe, in the l995
updated (partly rewritten and expanded) book from Robert Hale.
The complex formations are post D & D and crop circle culture
and so - most reasonably considered hoaxes. Of course, I am open
to persuasion otherwise. But at this point in time that seems a
hypothesis to best fit the evidence.

Often a book titled 'mystery solved' is absurdly labelled (and
it was not our idea to use this emphasis here). But I genuinely
believe that the case Paul and I set out for the twin track -
hoaxing of complex patterns and a genuine atmospheric phenomenon
producing occasional simple circles - is not far from the mark.
I don't often get off that fence and come down firmly for one
view of a phenomenon, but here - unless the evidence changes - I
do. To me crop circles are right now a mystery solved and Doug
and Dave have frankly got little to do with it either way,
except as one of many self-confessed hoaxers of complex circles.
They are a distraction from the real evidence pointing to an
underlying real phenomenon that is out there if you care to look
for it. But I see no reason to even suspect there is a need for
that real phenomenon to be alien or mystical in origin. It has
perfectly consistent characteristics within atmospheric physics.

Best wishes,

Jenny Randles