BLT Research: Response to "Crop Circle Seed Germination Test, 2009""

Comments Regarding
"Crop Circle Seed Germination Test, 2009"

by
Nancy Talbott
BLT Research Team Inc.
(October, 2009)

July 5 2009 Crop Circle
Crop formation which appeared opposite Silbury Hill on July 5, 2009.

If Simeon Hein's purpose in his recent posting (below) is an attempt to compare this 2009 "test" of three UK crop formations to germination results published by the BLT Research Team in the 1990s he has apparently failed to understand that original work. He does not follow the protocol consistently carried out (and published) by W.C. Levengood (1994) and by W.C. Levengood and Nancy Talbott (1999) (see: http://www.bltresearch.com/published.php), and he also mis-reports his own results. Critical details not covered by Hein include:

Date formation occurred not provided;

Date samples & controls were obtained not given, so the amount of time which had elapsed between occurrence and sampling not known;

No info provided as to distance from formation controls were taken;

No root and/or shoot measurements taken at 3-day intervals, thus no information provided as to when germination first began or any details regarding variation or consistency of growth rate;

Sample and control sizes totally inadequate;

Only criteria reported is % of overall germination, not whether germination was, in fact, "faster or slower."

Curiously Hein, in his own comments, says in his first paragraph that the Silbury Hill formation seedlings showed a "big difference between the inside and outside seeds' germination rates" (Samples = 81% overall germination, Controls = 40% overall germination). But in his "analysis" he says that "in the Silbury Hill formation, there was not much difference" - when in fact this formation showed the greatest change in percentage of seeds germinated of all of the 3 formations sampled.

Why he would make one assertion in his opening paragraph and the opposing assertion in his last, I don't know -- but it suggests carelessness and a lack of professionalism in his overall approach.

Below are photographs taken of sample and control seedlings germinated in W.C.Levengood's Michigan laboratory after exposing these normal seeds to unusual electrical pulses ("ion avalanches") -- pulses which Levengood discovered produced the same increased growth rate he had previously found in seedlings germinated from seeds taken from crop circles which had occurred late in the season, in mature plants.

MIR-treated Samples. Photo: W.C. Levengood.

MIR controls. Photo: W.C. Levengood

Although the above case is an extreme example, multiple trials with a wide variety of seeds exposed to these "ion avalanches" consistently produced faster germination and greater yield in the plants which were grown to harvest, as well as causing increased tolerance to typical plant "stressors" (lack of adequate sunlight and/or water).

These results clearly confirm Levengood's hypothesis that an energy system which includes these unusual electrical pulses is involved in the creation of genuine crop circles-at least those which occur late in the season.

Hein states that his tests do not support the idea that crop circles (I think he means, here, that the energies thought to be involved in the creation of crop circles) uniformly increase seed germination rates. One of his problems, here, is that no research has ever (so far as I am aware) indicated that seeds taken from all crop circles will germinate more quickly than their control seeds. The research which has been conducted by the BLT Research Team, and published in the peer-reviewed journals above, revealed that seeds taken from crop circles which occur in mature crop, late in the growing season -- crop in which the seed is fully formed at the time the crop circle occurs -- regularly showed increased seed germination (at a rate of up to 5 times that of the controls). [For summary and photos, see items #5(d) and #7 in the Plant Abnormalities section of the BLT web-site: http://www.bltresearch.com/plantab.php.]

Dr. Hein states that he has a degree in sociology -- not in one of the "hard" sciences such as biology or another of the other plant sciences. I suggest his energies might be more productively applied in the arena of the social sciences.

Simeon Hein's 9/22/09 posting
http://newcrystalmind.com

"In our most recent trip to the crop circles in the U.K. we took seed samples from different crop formations to see if they had any effect on germination rates. We took four seed heads from inside and four heads from outside each formation. 100 seeds were tested per group for a total of 200 seeds per formation. Three sets of crop circle seeds were examined: from Waden Hill, Silbury Hill, and Martinsell Hill (lots of hill formations, see pictures above thanks to Russell Stannard and Steve Alexander). In each case we gathered seeds from inside the formation, laid crop on the ground and outside the formation from standing stalks. A standard germination test was performed by Precision Seed Testing labs of Wheat Ridge, Colorado, courtesy of Gene Milstein, to see if the seeds germinated faster or slower if they were from the crop circle. In the Silbury Hill formation, there was a big difference between the inside and outside seeds' germination rates with seeds from inside germinating at a rate of 81 percent compared to 40 percent from outside the formation. At Waden Hill, both sets of seeds germinated at roughly the same rates of 88 and 92 percent, for outside and inside seeds, respectively. For Martinsell Hill, the germination rates were 92 and 78 percents, respectively, with a higher proportion of the outside seeds germinating compared with the 'inside the formation' seeds.

Import Variables: Seeds that are laid on the ground of crop formations are subject to different amounts of sunlight than that of standing crops, more contact with moisture, and more trampling from crop visitors. Any or all of these variables might have an effect on germination rates. The shape and energies of the crop circles itself may also play a role in affecting the germinating seeds.

Analysis: Because of the small sample sizes of around 100 seeds per test, we can't be highly confident in the results. In the Martinsell formation, the seeds from outside the formation germinated better. In the Waden Hill formation, the crop circle formation seeds germinated better than the control seeds. And in the Silbury Hill formation, there was not much difference. From these results, we can't make any real conclusions as to whether crop circles increase or decrease germination rates. To increase our statistical confidence we would need larger seeds samples, about 400 per sample, and more crop circles. We can say, however, that our tests, so far, do not support the idea, commonly heard in some parts of the crop circle research community, that crop circles uniformly increase seed germination rates from seeds inside these formations. More tests are needed to make a clear determination about this phenomena and to see if there is any uniform effect one way or another."