Dr. Ronald Leo Sprinkle (born August 31, 1930) is (was?) an American psychologist. He studied at the University of Colorado and earned his Ph.D. at the University of Missouri.

During his time as a professor at the University of Wyoming he was perhaps the first academic figure to investigate tales of supposed alien abduction; his involvement in this field began in the 1960s.

Sprinkle became convinced of the phenomenon's actuality, and was perhaps the first to suggest a link between abductions and so-called cattle mutilations. In 1980 he founded the Rocky Mountain Conference on UFO Investigation. Eventually Sprinkle came to believe that he had been abducted by aliens in his youth; he was forced from his job at the University of Wyoming in 1989. (Bryan, 145fn)

Sources

• C.D.B. Bryan; Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind: Alien Abduction, UFOs and the Conference at M.I.T.; Alfred A. Knopf, 1995; ISBN 0679429751