“It was a victory of skeptical scientific inquiry over

“It was a victory of skeptical scientific inquiry over tabloid headlines. For 13 years people had been concocting increasingly bizarre explanations for those mysterious circles and lines pressed into the grain fields in Southern England. Were they the landing sites of UFO’s? No, the crop circles — or at least some of them — were the handiwork of a pair of elderly British landscape painters who engineered the elaborate hoax (with string and planks) “for a bit of a laugh.” One of the two most prestigious scientific journals extant, Science News, dated Feb. 1, 1992, devoted its cover story to Dr. Hawkins’ unique investigations of the crop patterns. The article entitled “Euclid’s Crop Circles’* by Ivars Peterson includes an appropriate response to the “solution of the mystery” which Time magazine’s staff so readily adopted for the edification of its trusting readership: “Most crop deformations appear as simple, nearly perfect circles of grain flattened in a spiral pattern. But a significant number consists of circles in groups, circles inside rings, or circles with spurs and other appendages. Within these geometric forms, the grain itself may be laid down in various patterns. “Explanations of the phenomeon range from the bizarre to the unnatural. To some people, the circles - which began appearing about a decade ago - represent the handiwork of extraterrestrial invaders, or crafty tradesmen bent on mischief after an evening at the pub, or even hordes of graduate students driven by a mad