"Crop circles are a lens through which we can explore the
nature and appeal of hoaxes. Fakes, counterfeits and forgeries are all around
us in the everyday world—from dud $50 bills to spurious Picassos. People’s motives
for taking the unreal as real are easily discerned: we trust our currency, and
many people would like to own a Picasso. The nebulous world of the anomalous
and the paranormal is even richer soil for hoaxers. A large proportion of the
population believes in ghosts, angels, UFOs and ET visitations, fairies,
psychokinesis and other strange phenomena. These beliefs elude scientific
examination and proof. And it’s just such proof that the hoaxer brings to the
table for those hungry for evidence that their beliefs are not deluded.
False evidence intended to corroborate an existing legend is
known to folklorists as “ostension.” This process also inevitably extends the
legend. For, even if the evidence is eventually exposed as false, it will have
affected people’s perceptions of the phenomenon it was intended to represent.
Faked photographs of UFOs, Loch Ness monsters and ghosts generally fall under
the heading of ostension. Another example is the series of photographs of
fairies taken by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths at Cottingley, Yorkshire,
between 1917 and 1920. These show that the motive for producing such evidence
may come from belief, rather than from any wish to mislead or play pranks. One
of the girls insisted till her dying day that she really had seen fairies—the
manufactured pictures were a memento of her real experience. And the photos
were taken as genuine by such luminaries as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle—the great
exponent, in his Sherlock Holmes stories, of logic.
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Crop-Circles-The-Art-of-the-Hoax.html#ixzz2b9CVHRvu
Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter
The Meier Hoax