A debunker is a person or organization that exposes or discredits claims believed to be false, exaggerated, or pretentious. The term is often associated with skeptical investigation of controversial topics such as UFOs, claimed paranormal phenomena, cryptids, conspiracy theories, alternative medicine, religion, exploratory or fringe areas of scientific, or pseudoscientific research.
Popular Mechanics is a magazine of popular science and technology, featuring automotive, home, outdoor, electronics, science, do it yourself, and technology topics. Military topics, aviation and transportation of all types, space, tools and gadgets are commonly featured.
There are various conspiracy theories that attribute the preparation and execution of the September 11 attacks against the United States to parties other than, or in addition to, al-Qaeda. These include the theory that high-level government officials had advance knowledge of the attacks. Government investigations and independent reviews have rejected these theories. Proponents of these theories assert that there are inconsistencies in the commonly accepted version, or that there exists evidence that was ignored, concealed, or overlooked.
Michel Chossudovsky is a Canadian economist and author. He is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Ottawa and the president and director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which runs the website globalresearch.ca, founded in 2001, which publishes falsehoods and conspiracy theories. Chossudovsky has promoted conspiracy theories about 9/11.
Jeffry Shearer Rense is an American radio talk-show host. His show, the Jeff Rense Program, was broadcast via satellite radio and is now released through his personal website.
David Ray Griffin was an American professor of philosophy of religion and theology and a 9/11 conspiracy theorist. Along with John B. Cobb, Jr., he founded the Center for Process Studies in 1973, a research center of Claremont School of Theology that promotes process thought. Griffin published numerous books about the September 11 attacks, claiming that elements of the Bush administration were involved. An advocate of the controlled demolition conspiracy theory, he was a founder member of Scholars for 9/11 Truth.
The 9/11 truth movement encompasses a disparate group of adherents to a set of overlapping conspiracy theories that dispute the general consensus of the September 11 attacks that a group of Al-Qaeda terrorists had hijacked four airliners and crashed them into the Pentagon and the original World Trade Center Twin Towers, which consequently collapsed. The primary focus is on missed information that adherents allege is not adequately explained in the official National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) reports, such as the collapse of 7 World Trade Center. They suggest a cover-up and, at the least, complicity by insiders.
Loose Change is a series of films released between 2005 and 2009 that argue in favor of certain conspiracy theories relating to the September 11 attacks. The films were written and directed by Dylan Avery and produced by Korey Rowe, Jason Bermas, and Matthew Brown.
Jim Hoffman is a conspiracy theorist from Oakland, California, who created several web sites about the September 11, 2001 attacks that analyze and suggest alternative accounts for the events of that day. His primary website, 9-11 Research, serves as an archive of documentation and alternative analyses about the attacks. Hoffman has also written numerous technical essays which focus on the World Trade Center controlled demolition hypothesis.
Jesse Walker is books editor of Reason magazine. The University of Michigan alumnus has written the books The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory and Rebels on the Air: An Alternative History of Radio in America, and he maintains a blog called The Perpetual Three-Dot Column. His articles have appeared in a number of publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Salon, The New Republic, Politico, L.A. Times, L.A. Weekly, Chronicles, Boing Boing, No Depression, and the Journal of American Studies.
The CIA and September 11 is a 2003 non-fiction book by Andreas von Bülow, a former state-secretary in the German Federal Ministry of Defence and a Social Democratic member of the Bundestag from 1969 to 1994. The book disputes al-Qaeda's responsibility for the September 11 attacks and suggests that it may have instead been a false flag operation arranged by the U.S. federal government and Israel. The book has enjoyed considerable commercial success in Germany, where it is published by Piper Verlag, and has sold over 100,000 copies. However, it has faced allegations ranging from absurdity and fostering anti-Americanism, to anti-Semitism, while the quality of its sourcing and the timing of its publication have given rise to debate within the German publishing industry. In subsequent media appearances, Bülow has defended his work, and strongly denied that its content is anti-Semitic.
Benjamin Chertoff is a journalist, photographer and video producer. He is most known for his work on the Popular Mechanics article 9/11: Debunking The Myths. He also created the Popular Mechanics Show, the weekly podcast of Popular Mechanics magazine. He is currently a freelance photojournalist, writer and documentary producer.
Some conspiracy theories contend that the collapse of the World Trade Center was caused not solely by the airliner crash damage that occurred as part of the September 11 attacks and the resulting fire damage but also by explosives installed in the buildings in advance. Controlled demolition theories make up a major component of 9/11 conspiracy theories.
Christopher L. Hodapp is an American author and filmmaker, noted for his writings about Freemasonry, fraternalism, the Knights Templar, secret societies and conspiracy theories. He is the founding editor in chief of the Journal of The Masonic Society, the associate director of the Masonic Library and Museum of Indiana, and Public Relations Director for the Grand Lodge F&AM of Indiana.
George Edward Griffin is an American author, filmmaker, lecturer, and a conspiracy theorist. Griffin's writings promote a number of right-wing views and conspiracy theories regarding politics, defense and health care. In his book World Without Cancer, he argued in favor of a pseudo-scientific theory that asserted cancer to be a nutritional deficiency curable by consuming amygdalin. He is the author of The Creature from Jekyll Island (1994), which advances debunked conspiracy theories about the Federal Reserve System. He is an HIV/AIDS denialist, supports the 9/11 Truth movement, and supports the specific John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory that Oswald was not the assassin. He also believes that the Biblical Noah's Ark is located at the Durupınar site in Turkey.
Karl Tomlinson Pflock was a CIA intelligence officer, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan Administration, strategic planner, UFO researcher, and author of both fiction and non-fiction. He was best known for his book Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe.
Jason Colavito is an American author and independent scholar specializing in the study of fringe theories particularly around ancient history and extraterrestrials. Colavito has written a number of books, including The Cult of Alien Gods (2005), The Mound Builder Myth (2020), and Legends of the Pyramids (2021).
Big Pharma conspiracy theories are conspiracy theories that claim that pharmaceutical companies as a whole, especially big corporations, act in dangerously secretive and sinister ways that harm patients. This includes concealing effective treatments, perhaps even to the point of intentionally causing and/or worsening a wide range of diseases, in the pursuit of higher profits and/or other nefarious goals. The general public supposedly lives in a state of ignorance, according to such claims.
The FEMA camps conspiracy theory is a belief, particularly within the American Patriot movement, that the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is planning to imprison US citizens in concentration camps, following the imposition of martial law in the United States after a major disaster or crisis. In some versions of the theory, only suspected dissidents will be imprisoned. In more extreme versions, large numbers of US citizens will be imprisoned for the purposes of extermination as a New World Order is established. The theory has existed since the late 1970s, but its circulation has increased with the advent of the internet and social media platforms.
Mick West is a British-American science writer, skeptical investigator, and retired video game programmer. He is the creator of the websites Contrail Science and Metabunk, and he investigates and debunks pseudoscientific claims and conspiracy theories such as chemtrails and UFOs. His first book is Escaping the Rabbit Hole: How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect (2018).
