Crop Circles

[John S]

As the Communist said to the Nazi;
"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

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http://www.watchingyou.com/newage.html

[GaryKelly]

As the Communist said to the Nazi;
"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

Wasn't that Wittgenstein?

[John S]

So you know Wittgenstein politics?

[Wombat]

As the Communist said to the Nazi;
"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

Wasn't that Wittgenstein?

Well it certainly wasn't traditional gospel. Concerning the rest, I shall remain discretely silent.

[OutOfBreath]

So...their exposure as hoaxes a few years back has been exposed as a hoax?

Not exactly. There seems little doubt that some crop circles are hoaxes. The researches who believe that there are genuine crop circles are always on the lookout for hoaxes and dismiss some of the formations as likely hoaxes.

The guys who came forward to say they are making some of the circles in the middle of the night demonstrated they did it. And there's just no way that would account for all of them. No way. And, believe me, I approach this stuff with a healthy skepticism.

Well, on the program I saw, two guys with boards and ropes create a fairly large and elaborate crop circle in a couple of hours. So why is there "no way that would account for all of them?" Sure, those same two guys may not have created all the circles - but the technique they use will handle any formation and lends itself readily to scaling up.

I'd believe in a few thousand pranksters around the world (and it really only takes a handful) before I would believe that some "vastly greater intelligence" has nothing better to do than play silly-arsed games.

I remember when the crop-circle craziness first started the flat claim by the little-green-men camp was that there was "no way such perfect circles could be created overnight without leaving signs" because the "technology was beyond anything currently available." And this was when the crop circles were pretty simple affairs. Now that two guys have proven that even multiple circles can be created overnight using nothing but a couple of boards and ropes the little-green-men camp is saying "not all of them could be created that way." :roll:

So now there are "crop circle researchers," eh? Can you spell "another gravy train for academia," boys and girls?

Oh well, some folks will believe anything. I guess if it makes 'em happy it's pretty harmless.

[Caj]

So now there are "crop circle researchers," eh? Can you spell "another gravy train for academia," boys and girls?

No, absolutely not.

So-called "crop-circle researchers" are not members of academia, just because they call themselves researchers. They are typically like other UFO researchers, pyramidologists or perpetual-motion folk---unaffiliated folk who do this stuff as a hobby or occasionally publish paperbacks.

If anything, these people are engaged in a constant struggle with academia, because nobody there takes them seriously. Crackpots generally regard the academic world as a corrupt establishment out to suppress the "real truth."

Caj

[Lorenzo]

Wow, well said, Caj.

[Wombat]

Wow, well said, Caj.

Quite so. I was going to make a similar post but hardly need to now.

Perhaps a bit of personal anecdote might help make the divide clear for those who aren't aware of it. The media tend to blur the distinction a bit for reasons I'd rather not speculate on.

As an academic I get several emails a month and about one manuscript a year, all unsolicited, from people who think they have the answer to everything. Since I have a constant stream of genuine questions from students and academic colleagues in my inbox, lectures to prepare and give, papers to mark, books to read and write and university initiatives to administer as well as a private life, these letters tend not to get answered, no doubt leading to the perception of conspiracy.

You can usually tell a crank by their ability to mention God and quantum mechanics in at least every second sentence. These people are truly astonishing. Their contempt for people who've struggled to acquire qualifications drips from every page. They always talk as though they are doing me a favour in sending me their latest work. Their knowledge is boundless. They not only know who the unknown soldier was, they also know who shot him. Not only are they thoroughly acquainted with the man in the street, they know exactly where he's been and where he's going to.

[Walden]

You can usually tell a crank by their ability to mention God and quantum mechanics in at least every second sentence. These people are truly astonishing. Their contempt for people who've struggled to acquire qualifications drips from every page. They always talk as though they are doing me a favour in sending me their latest work. Their knowledge is boundless. They not only know who the unknown soldier was, they also know who shot him. Not only are they thoroughly acquainted with the man in the street, they know exactly where he's been and where he's going to.

But when you got an infestation, Who You Gonna Call?







.

[Darwin]

As an academic I get several emails a month and about one manuscript a year, all unsolicited, from people who think they have the answer to everything. Since I have a constant stream of genuine questions from students and academic colleagues in my inbox, lectures to prepare and give, papers to mark, books to read and write and university initiatives to administer as well as a private life, these letters tend not to get answered, no doubt leading to the perception of conspiracy.

You can usually tell a crank by their ability to mention God and quantum mechanics in at least every second sentence.

Ooh! Ooh! What's your field? Is it Physics? Wanna hear my theory about how the Hubble red shift is not a Doppler shift, so the whole expanding universe thing is a crock? Huh? Huh? Where do I send it to? We can write a book together and get RICH!!!

Whaddaya say? Huh? Huh? Okay?

I'm highly qualified. I know at least as much about physics as the average physicist does about evolutionary biology or linguistics. ...at least that much...

[Wombat]

As an academic I get several emails a month and about one manuscript a year, all unsolicited, from people who think they have the answer to everything. Since I have a constant stream of genuine questions from students and academic colleagues in my inbox, lectures to prepare and give, papers to mark, books to read and write and university initiatives to administer as well as a private life, these letters tend not to get answered, no doubt leading to the perception of conspiracy.

You can usually tell a crank by their ability to mention God and quantum mechanics in at least every second sentence.

Ooh! Ooh! What's your field? Is it Physics? Wanna hear my theory about how the Hubble red shift is not a Doppler shift, so the whole expanding universe thing is a crock? Huh? Huh? Where do I send it to? We can write a book together and get RICH!!!

Whaddaya say? Huh? Huh? Okay?

I'm highly qualified. I know at least as much about physics as the average physicist does about evolutionary biology or linguistics. ...at least that much...

Mike, if the cranks were 10% as funny as you are I'd take the time to read their letters. Actually they are so unbelievably earnest.

The funny thing about the direction this discussion as taken is that there actually is an academic gravy train but a typical project for one of its passengers is quite the opposite of what OOB seemed to be imagining. Far from aspiring to be be earthshatteringly deep and meaningful, gravy train projects are so dull that it is hard to imagine how anyone could stay awake long enough to do the research and write it up. People on that gravy train earn no more respect within academia than they get from the general public—what mystifies everyone is how they manage to fool administraters (and themselves.)

[Wombat]

You can usually tell a crank by their ability to mention God and quantum mechanics in at least every second sentence. These people are truly astonishing. Their contempt for people who've struggled to acquire qualifications drips from every page. They always talk as though they are doing me a favour in sending me their latest work. Their knowledge is boundless. They not only know who the unknown soldier was, they also know who shot him. Not only are they thoroughly acquainted with the man in the street, they know exactly where he's been and where he's going to.

But when you got an infestation, Who You Gonna Call?







.

[OutOfBreath]

The funny thing about the direction this discussion as taken is that there actually is an academic gravy train but a typical project for one of its passengers is quite the opposite of what OOB seemed to be imagining. Far from aspiring to be be earthshatteringly deep and meaningful, gravy train projects are so dull that it is hard to imagine how anyone could stay awake long enough to do the research and write it up. People on that gravy train earn no more respect within academia than they get from the general public—what mystifies everyone is how they manage to fool administraters (and themselves.)

No, that sounds about like what I was imagining. I define a gravy train project as any where a "researcher" scams money (be it our tax dollars from the government, private research grants, or "donations" from a gullible public) to "study" a subject that either has no value or that is so obvious that you are guaranteed that the response to their "findings" will be, "well, DUH!"

You see this all the time. Headlines like, "researchers fault video games and poor eating habits in childhood obesity epidemic." Well, DUH! How many millions did those researchers spend to arrive at such an unexpected conclusion, I wonder?

I know a lot of research is valid, but you have to admit that a lot of researchers are nothing but charlatans sucking at the public teat, too. And then, of course, there are the activists who fund or perform "research" intended solely to support their favorite pet theory or "cause."

About ten years ago I knew a fella who made a pretty good living writing grant applications for "researchers." He laughed about a lot of his clients. He said many were legitimate but he felt like at least half of his clients were total incompetents who were desperately searching for a means of avoiding working for a living.

[fancypiper]

I think it was rather funny when studies showed that men and women were actually different and it was reported with a straight face on the front of one of our major news magazines. :roll:

[Caj]

Mike, if the cranks were 10% as funny as you are I'd take the time to read their letters. Actually they are so unbelievably earnest.

Actually, some of them are downright scary.

The populism invoked by crackpots ("us normal guys who work for a living versus the corrupt establishment of ivory tower eggheads") often has a threatening, you'll-be-sorry vibe. Many crackpots envision a near future in which the general public recognizes their genius, and bad things happen to the academics. In some fantasies the academics are merely exposed as useless bureaucrats; in some, they lose their university jobs; in some they are killed in a massive uprising.

Seriously. There's a famous physics crackpot named George Hammond, who claims to have a scientific proof of God (SPOG). He's convinced that any day now a spontaneous and violent revolution will occur, wherein the public will become aware of his proof, and storm universities to take revenge on the Godless scientists who tried to suppress it.

Another, less gruesome example comes from a well-known mathematics crackpot, known for hundreds of separate attempts to prove Fermat's Last Theorem. Last year he announced that with his help (presumably he'd write a book or start a blog) the media would soon focus on his situation and the nasty mathematicians who ignored him. His creepy announcement has the same basic ideas: the non-academic public is right behind me, or should be any day now, and you all are in a lot of trouble. Prepare for the crackpot apocalypse.

Caj