Ben Radford

Anybody heard of this character, Ben Radford? He seems to be acclaimed (by materialists) as a top paranormal researcher, but he is also part of CSI/CSICOP, which is notorious for it's bias against psi and so forth. Judging from his reviews and articles about people, he rides alot on rhetoric and emotion as many big time skeptical writers with a position to hold do. 

I know a couple years ago he got called out in a lie on Skeptiko, and plenty of people have pointed out he has a tendency of cherry picking data. Seems his strong suit is "debunking" urban legends and folklore, two things serious parapsychologists and others convinced of non materialist phenomenon are far from defending yet he seems to treat them as if that is all their research amounts too. He goes for the low hanging fruit of paranormal cases. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Radford

So he's a skeptic/debunker masquerading as a researcher. No wonder they like him.

So he's a skeptic/debunker masquerading as a researcher. No wonder they like him.

Well, I'll hand it to him, he's right to say not all that is claimed to be paranormal is paranormal. He goes around and busts "videos" of ghosts and so forth, but they are the easy cases. He's usually the first person to seriously investigate the cases, and acts like that all paranormal cases can be as easily explained and that's the drive of debunkers. But it's a flat out lie. 

Videos are one thing, but the range of paranormal activity and phenomenon he tries to discredit in the meantime are another. Proponents don't think all cases are ghosts or the like, and would be the first to admit that the ones Radford debunks and uses as examples are indeed probably not. It's the other stuff that has them raising their eyebrows

Can't say that I follow trendy debunkers, so my opinion about him may be wrong, but the one time that his name crossed my daily readings was when he tried to debunk the Chupacabra creature (???). And, IDK, his attempts to label the eyewitness as, well, batshit insane and trying to raise his speculation that the whole episode was imagined after seeing a movie (I believe it was Species, may be wrong) rubbed me the wrong way. Mind that I'm still not convinced that the Chupacabra exists, but his arrogance towards this person was mind blowing, especially because I don't think that he actually speaks Spanish... Which actually convinces me that he went down there with a set of pre-written questions, found a translator and voila, confirmation bias at its finest.

Anybody heard of this character, Ben Radford? He seems to be acclaimed (by materialists) as a top paranormal researcher, but he is also part of CSI/CSICOP, which is notorious for it's bias against psi and so forth. Judging from his reviews and articles about people, he rides alot on rhetoric and emotion as many big time skeptical writers with a position to hold do. 

I know a couple years ago he got called out in a lie on Skeptiko, and plenty of people have pointed out he has a tendency of cherry picking data. Seems his strong suit is "debunking" urban legends and folklore, two things serious parapsychologists and others convinced of non materialist phenomenon are far from defending yet he seems to treat them as if that is all their research amounts too. He goes for the low hanging fruit of paranormal cases. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Radford

If you want the poop on Ben Radford go over to skeptiko and put his name in the search. Alex does a great job of exposing him

His stuff is aimed at the skeptical echo-chamber, which makes it easy to get lazy, which he seems to be more often than not.

If you want the poop on Ben Radford go over to skeptiko and put his name in the search. Alex does a great job of exposing him

Unfortunately it’s not that easy. I eventually found one show that featured him on Skeptiko only to have it say something like ‘this is no longer available’. I had listened to one or two Skeptiko shows that highlighted his blatant dishonesty before, probably including the one that wasn’t available. The one where the real detective is on the line and totally refutes Radford’s version of things - amazing! Yet he appears somewhere a few months later spouting the same shit. How can you defeat that sort of dishonesty?

Unfortunately it’s not that easy. I eventually found one show that featured him on Skeptiko only to have it say something like ‘this is no longer available’. I had listened to one or two Skeptiko shows that highlighted his blatant dishonesty before, probably including the one that wasn’t available. The one where the real detective is on the line and totally refutes Radford’s version of things - amazing! Yet he appears somewhere a few months later spouting the same shit. How can you defeat that sort of dishonesty?

Seems like there is a lot of that going around these days!

There was a link to one of his articles on the SPR Facebook page:
https://centerforinquiry.org/blog/anothe...chic-fail/

Now he may be right to be sceptical about "psychics" who claim to be able to help in cases of abduction, but what he writes here seems to be very thin on evidence. He's talking about the case of Jayme Closs, who went missing last year after her parents were killed, and who was found after allegedly being abducted and escaping from her captor. Radford says "Over 1,200 tips, including from psychics, poured in to the Barron County Sheriff’s Department." Then he goes on to say she was found by a dog-walker, not by psychics or police.

Then a bit further on he mentions some parallel cases, and says:
"The cases are similar, but Closs, Smart, and Dugard have something else in common (and with other missing persons including Natalee Holloway, Laci Peterson, Chandra Levy, and many others): Hundreds of psychics gave information about their location while they were missing—and every single psychic turned out to be completely wrong."


Now it may be that "every single psychic turned out to be completely wrong", but I don't see any evidence to back that statement up. The last six words of the phrase are a link, but it leads to an article written in 2005, so it can't contain any information about Closs (unless Radford is gifted with precognition).

Otherwise in Closs's case it seems to be based purely on the fact that the psychic "tips" didn't result in Closs being found. But isn't it a huge leap from that fact to the conclusion that they were all "completely wrong"? Shouldn't we expect a lot of them to be partly right just by chance? If someone wanted to reach a scientifically sound conclusion about the accuracy of the psychic "tips", wouldn't they need to use some kind of rating protocol using blinded judges, or something like that? I really doubt that silly hyperbole like this does anything to help the cause of genuine scepticism.

Then a bit further on he mentions some parallel cases, and says:
"The cases are similar, but Closs, Smart, and Dugard have something else in common (and with other missing persons including Natalee Holloway, Laci Peterson, Chandra Levy, and many others): Hundreds of psychics gave information about their location while they were missing—and every single psychic turned out to be completely wrong."

Now it may be that "every single psychic turned out to be completely wrong", but I don't see any evidence to back that statement up. The last six words of the phrase are a link, but it leads to an article written in 2005, so it can't contain any information about Closs (unless Radford is gifted with precognition).

Following the link, I see it doesn't even mention Dugard, and the only pertinent information about Smart is that despite nearly a thousand psychics having contacted the police, she wasn't located as a result of information from psychics.

Nor do Radford's general statements about psychics make much sense:
"... when police follow up on the information, the vast majority of it --or all of it--turns out to be wrong. One trick psychics use is to give very vague information open to later interpretation (most missing persons are likely to be found "near water," even if it's a lake, puddle, river, drainage pipe, etc.). They also use information already available through normal means, and make so many different guesses that some will almost certainly be right."