Re: Re: "Exploded Nodes" in Crop Circles
JMA said:
The only thing I know is an debunking of Haselhof and Levengood claim:
http://psiapplications.com/Treepad/documents/70.html
The debunking is by Joe Nickell on the CSICOP website:
http://www.csicop.org/si/2002-09/crop-circles.html
If there is other scientific sites that address this directly, I'd like also to know them...
Re Levengood (the "L" in the BLT) and the Balls Of Light (BOL) "theory":
Levengood is relying on the old
Argument From Ignorance fallacy: he doesn't know (is ignorant of) how it was done so it must have been done by _________ (and here he inserts his preferred explanation: BOLs in this case). Richard Dawkins calls it Argument From Personal Incredulity. The flaw in this line of reasoning is that there are limitless things that could cause an unexplained observation, including humans using an unknown method. All it really shows is the arguer's lack of imagination. This is not how science is done.
What Levengood needs to learn is the principle of falsification: can the hypothesis be tested in such a way that, if the hypothesis is wrong, it will fail the test? (Because what good is a test that, if the hypothesis is wrong, it will
pass the test?) Levengood hasn't done this, to my knowledge, he just finds "anomalies" that he thinks couldn't have been done by humans. He needs to find positive evidence
for his theory, not what he
thinks is negative evidence
against human hoaxers. Until he finds a way to falsify his theory of how crop circles are made (if he even has a theory: BOLs are being suggested here), he hasn't done that. And since we know that some or even most crop circles are made by humans (
even leading "cerealogists" admit 80% are man made), there is no reason to suppose they all aren't.
That's all you really need to know. However, even if we ignore the argument from ignorance and lack of falsification, Levengood's work is still fundamentally flawed. He takes stalks from crop circles and from near the circles, and notes that the stalks taken from in the circles are different from those taken from outside the circles. Well duh: the stalks in the circles have been flattened! He also finds that some circles do not produce stalks with anomalies. He declares these to be "fakes" (ie man made), while the stalks that do have the anomalies are from "genuine" (ie not man-made), circles. How does he know this? Because if the stalks have anomalies they must be from "genuine" circles. How does he know this? Because "fake" circles don't have anomalies. How does he know this? Because if they have anomalies they are not from "fake" circles (etc etc: you get the idea). This is, of course, circular reasoning (pun inevitable): another fallacy. Also, none of his work is done double-blind and so experimenter bias is not controlled for. Levengood's work has not to my knowledge been published in any mainstream peer reviewed journal, nor has it ever been replicated. Pretty safe to say it's nuts until Levengood can prove it isn't. (ie, BOLs are BOLLOCKs.)
Man, I crack myself up.
