I also think the following. Really good detective work could solve this mystery:
-Get exact dates for circles. Plot them vs weather (was it dry) and against moon phase (was it a full moon or a nearly full moon)
-Interview farmers involved with actual circles. Are they cashing in? What is their attitude to the circles? Are they being paid off by circle makers?
-Study the actual sites. Is there anybody who should have been able to observe the creation of the circle?
-Go into detail with the folks at
www.circlemakers.org - how long does it really take them to make circles? What prep are they doing before? What are the ACTUAL logistics involved in making a complex circle (people involved, time, materials, preparation, how much experience do the circlemakers need etc)
-Study the actual circles made. Do they comply with methods? Are there any circles where methods would clearly fail?
-Try to ascertain if there are messed up circles. For example, this circle
http://www.southwalesargus.co.uk/news/8995276.Chepstow_crop_circle_astonishes_drivers/ which appeared just 6 miles from my house, looks bad. Some of the circles aren't circular. Try to establish how many mistakes there are. Are mistakes being ignored (and therefore "suppressed") by the true believers?
-Plot number of circles and quality of circles vs time. Is there are pattern? Is there a spike following news interest?
-Study location of circles. Try to establish where different groups are operating. By the way, this one seems pretty damning to me. There are circles around the world but they are poor. They really good circles are all in Wiltshire where things got going first and so where there is hard core group of experienced and motivated circle makers.
I have looked into crop circles before and haven't found this stuff. This is what we need to settle the matter. The problem is that you have the following people involved in this field:
-New age "believers" who believe no matter what.
-Arty hoaxers who clearly can make sophisticated circles and who are motivated to make them. But are there enough of these guys to make all the circles and to achieve the quality observed? Where are the mistakes?
-A press ignoring and/or playing it for laughs. They are never sending out reporter to really dig.
-Armchair folks (like me) gleaning what we can from the internet and then producing more stuff that just looks at other stuff (and doesn't go back to original sources).
All that said, this one IS soluble. If you do the detective work you could establish a reasonable answer to the question: "Can all of these be hoaxes?" But I don't see anybody who has done that work with an open mind. So, anyway, an opportunity. I only live 40/50 miles away from Wiltshire but, er, I'm not going to do it or at least not anytime soon (sorry).
I believe in lots of weird stuff. I even believe some of it has happened in my life but, at the end of the day, I think the circles really might all be hoaxed.