I never went to Madisonville that weekend. The arrival of the team I work with co-incided with my trip to Florida, and frankly now I'm glad I didn't waste the time, gas or my resources investigating this hoax.

This article is thanks to Mark Boring of the Monroe Couynty Buzz:

>"The recent crop circle that was discovered just outside Madisonville ten days ago was determined by experts on Wednesday “to be mechanically made by people.”
Those were the words from Jeff Wilson of Ohio, Director of the Independent Crop Circle Researchers Association, at a seminar held Wednesday evening at Donna’s Old Town Cafe, a gathering of around 40 individuals including personnel from WVLT Channel 8 who listened to the results of Wilson’s examination of a crop circle formation that appeared in a wheat field off Rocky Springs Road on May 5.

“It is clearly a manmade formation,” Wilson said, comparing the formation as he spoke to a previous pattern that appeared in another nearby wheat field 12 months ago.
“In that earlier formation we found elevated levels of radioactivity and increased levels of electromagnetic energy and evidence of microwave activity,” Wilson said. “In this year’s pattern we found no extraordinary energy at all.”
Wilson said that last year’s crop circle contained wheat plants with enlarged stem growth nodes, an anomaly that did not manifest in the second crop circle.
Of it, he said it was “clearly a man-made formation.”
A former college instructor of physics and astronomy, Wilson pointed out that several characteristics of non manmade crop circles cannot be duplicated by hoaxers.
“For one, you can’t fake radioactivity,” Wilson said, “Last year the radioactive count inside the first circle was two to four times the amount of normal background activity. And the one sure scientific test that separates man-made formations from those not made by man is the measurement of the lengthened grow nodes.”
“Growth node expulsions are just not a hoaxable effect,” he said.
Wilson called the recent crop circle a “typical hoax.”
“It’s not an extraordinarily good one either,” he said, “but it was done adequately. In terms of fooling anyone, the people who did it did not make a particularly good crop circle.”
Wilson said it probably only took a couple of hours to create the fake pattern.
As he spoke, Wilson kept comparing last year’s formation, which was discovered on the other side of Rocky Springs Road in a field owned by the Kefauver family, saying there were significant differences between plant stems inside and outside the circle, and there was a definite increase in levels of radioactivity, electromagnetic, and microwave energy inside the first pattern.
“This did not happen in this year’s formation.”
Wilson said he felt totally sympathetic with farmers who refuse to allow visitors into their crop fields.
“Conceivably several hundred dollars could be lost just because someone decides to play a hoax,” he said. “I try to discourage people from going out and creating man-made formations.”

The owner of the field, Johnnie Helms, was not happy when she heard Wilson pronounce the crop circle as bogus.
“I don’t like it,” she said. “If I find out who did this, I will prosecute them. Let me tell you, it better not happen again.”
Wilson said the wheat was green enough to recover, however.
“As a matter of fact, we found it in a state of recovery as we took our readings and measurements yesterday and today,” he said.
Wilson’s wife, Dilsie, told the BUZZ that hoaxes were common in ICCRA’s investigations, but she always found a positive twist when encountering a fake crop circle.
“We visited the Charles Hall Museum this afternoon,” she said, “and on our way back home to Ohio we plan to stop in Knoxville at the McClung Museum. This is one of the pleasures of our trips, whether we find a real crop circle or not.”
As for the recent crop circle, Wilson said it quite validates last year’s formation. The differences between the two were strikingly different, he said.
“The formation we investigated last year was not made by man. I can honestly say that. What created it and how it came to be, we don’t know. We can only determine which ones are made by pranksters and which ones are not formed by the hand of man. But that’s about as far as we can go.”
As for Monroe County, it’s averaging .500. One out two ain’t bad