Ted George Goertzel (born November 20, 1942) is an American sociologist and emeritus professor of sociology at Rutgers University. He is known for studying conspiracy theories in science. In 1994, for example, he conducted a survey of 347 people in New Jersey, on the basis of which he argued that each belief a person has about a conspiracy theory serve as a basis for their beliefs about other such theories. He is the father of Ben Goertzel.