Last month a bizarre photo circulated apparently depicting a flying city in the clouds. Explanations ranged from mirage to hoax to conspiracy operations; my take on it for Discovery News is HERE. You can find more on me and my work with a search for "Benjamin Radford"...
Investigation
A Look at Last Week’s “Exorcism Live” TV Show
On October 30, Destination America aired a 2-hour live special about a group of ghost hunters trying to exorcise a house; my article on it is HERE.
The Curious Case of Baby Lisa and the Psychic
In my over 15 years of investigations I've covered many dozens of claims of psychics and psychic detectives. Of those, about a half-dozen stand out as being particularly interesting or intriguing--not just yet another psychic making dubious claims, but some novel...
Study: Sex Offenders Not a Halloween Threat
From the Radford Files archives: Each year at Halloween, parents have concerns about trick-or-treating, and many believe that a danger far graver than chocolate overdose awaits their children in quiet neighborhoods: sex offenders. This scare is fueled by alarmist news...
Reality Check: Is America ‘Numb’ to Mass Shootings?
In the wake of a shooting at Oregon’s Umpqua Community College that left at least ten people dead, President Obama held a press conference in which he stated that “Somehow, this has become routine. The reporting is routine. My response here at this podium ends up...
Alex Tsakiris, Psychic Detectives, and Bad Science
Good science requires good data, and to get valid results scientists must consider all of the evidence. If a researcher chooses to exclude some of the information available in an experiment, for example, he or she should offer a rationale for doing so. When...
Interviewed on Internet Hoaxes and Rumors…
I and three other experts including Susan Gerbic are extensively quoted in a new story about internet hoaxes: "In today’s fast-paced news culture, misinformation and disinformation are spread with a click, often before authenticity and credibility are verified....
Balloon Boy Hoax Based on Eyewitness Testimony
From the Radford Files archives: In October 2009, a six-year-old boy named Falcon Heene was thought by many to have been floating alone through Colorado skies on Thursday in a silvery weather balloon created by his inventor father. It turned out that the whole...
Stonehenge Myths and Conspiracies
With the news last month about the discovery of a “super-Stonehenge” circling one of the world’s most famous monuments, attention has once again focused on the Wiltshire marvel. There are thousands of ancient stone circles across Europe, of which Stonehenge is...
Ghost Hunter Self-Expertise…
In reviewing my shelf of ghost hunting books for a book chapter I'm writing I noted that the author of two 2011 books on ghosts and ghost hunting writes that she "is new to the paranormal community, having entered field investigation in 2008." Doing a bit of math and...