Richard J. Wiseman (born 17 September 1966[citation needed]) is a professor of the public understanding of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom.

[6] In his early years at the University of Hertfordshire, Wiseman partnered with Simon Singh on a BBC segment about lying for the National Science Week.

The segment spanned TV, radio and print and featured a "politician making a statement, and letting the public vote on whether they thought this figure was telling the truth in each medium."

[14] The winning joke described a caller to emergency services who shoots his friend who has collapsed to comply with the instruction "First, let's make sure he's dead".

These public psychology experiments – such as enlisting people to name, and rate, their favourite gags in the search for the world's funniest jokes – have drawn hundreds of thousands of participants and plenty of press.

[16] In 2014 he does a repeat of his 'Beginners Guide to' but this time with 3 different talks: Wiseman has also become a content creator on YouTube after uploading a video of the colour changing card trick[20] in 2007 that has 6.

[23] In 2017 Wiseman interviewed Richard Dawkins at CSIcon Las Vegas 2017 covering topics on evolution, extra terrestrials and god.

[25] Through the Edinburgh Secret Society Wiseman has found a new following, hosting evenings of irreverent talks and entertainment on topics including self-help and dying.

In February 2011 they staged 'An Evening of Death' in A Victorian Anatomy Theatre at the University of Edinburgh, an event that sold out its 250 tickets within minutes.

He is a skeptic who does not believe in extrasensory perception or prayer and who, as a former magician, rejects the purported supernatural experiences reported in seances conducted in darkened rooms where every kind of trickery is available.

Wiseman also makes numerous appearances on some British television shows; in The Real Hustle he explains the psychology behind many of the scams and confidence tricks; in Mind Games he's a regular team captain of a panel game of puzzles, anagrams and conundrums; and in People Watchers, a hidden-camera show examining human behaviour.

Besides being interviewed in several of these television programmes, he was a creative consultant in an episode of Your Bleeped Up Brain and a researcher of the documentary Unlawful Killing.

[10] In 2004, he took part in a preliminary test of Natasha Demkina, a young Russian woman who claims to have a special vision that allows her to see inside of people's bodies and diagnose illnesses.

The test, whose validity has been disputed by Demkina's supporters,[28][29] was featured in the Discovery Channel documentary, The Girl with X-Ray Eyes.

The book offers its readers tools to investigate paranormal claims using QR Codes, which Wiseman saw as "exciting use of new media"[26] to allow people to see footage and make up their minds themselves.

In 2020, Wiseman, illustrator Jordan Collver and writer Rik Worth created Hocus Pocus, an interactive comic-book series that "promotes skepticism and critical thinking".

The first issue focuses on Victorian performer and mind reader Washington Irving Bishop and pioneer of parapsychology Joseph Banks Rhine.

When the user enters the rapid eye movement (REM) stage of sleep where dreaming is most common, the app delivers unique audio soundscapes which the subconscious is shown to respond to.