Benjamin Radford

Benjamin Radford is an American investigator and deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine, published by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, who has spent over two decades applying investigative methodology to UFO photographs, videos, and mass-sighting panics alongside his broader work on cryptid, ghost, and folklore claims. Trained partly in psychology, Radford brings particular attention to the social and media dynamics behind sighting waves, examining how initial ambiguous reports, amplified through local news coverage and social media, can generate cascading 'flap' events in which subsequent witnesses' expectations shape what they subsequently believe they observe, an approach he detailed methodologically in Scientific Paranormal Investigation (2010). He has conducted on-site investigations of specific UFO photo and video hoaxes, identifying digital manipulation and staged imagery in several widely circulated cases, and has written extensively critiquing sensationalized cable-television treatment of UFO and paranormal claims. Radford frequently appears in mainstream media as a skeptical counterpoint during periods of heightened UAP news coverage, and his Skeptical Inquirer columns have provided some of the most consistent ongoing critical commentary on the post-2017 wave of government disclosure claims, arguing that renewed institutional interest has not been matched by correspondingly rigorous public evidentiary standards.