Crop circles reported in the UK

As China filed ever more resident patent applications between 2010 and 2021, crop circles in the UK declined in almost perfect negative correlation, implying either that technological progress discourages agricultural vandalism, or that China's patent office is staffed by the people who used to flatten English wheat fields at night. China's patent applications grew from roughly 391,000 to 1.58 million annually. UK crop circles went from around 50 per year to fewer than 10. Draw your own conclusions. Please don't.

China's resident patent applications grew explosively through the 2010s, driven by government incentive programs, the maturation of Chinese technology companies, and deliberate policy to increase innovation output — applications roughly quadrupled between 2010 and 2021. UK crop circle reports declined over the same period, likely reflecting a combination of shifting media attention, reduced novelty (the phenomenon peaked culturally in the 1990s), and the aging of the communities most engaged in both creating and documenting them. One is a government-driven industrial policy metric; the other is a cultural curiosity in terminal decline.

A thing growing exponentially and a thing fading into irrelevance will produce an excellent negative correlation. It takes only two directions and an overlapping time window — no connection required.