As a reporter for Environmental Science and Technology (ES&T), a small industry trade publication, Paul Thacker discovered an entire industry built around spinning science for the purpose of confusing the public while benefiting big business. He wrote exposés documenting the tobacco and oil industry ties of Steven Milloy's junkscience.com, which purports to debunk bad science about issues such as global warming.

Al Qaeda will be "on the march in 2007," predicts journalist and terrorism expert Ahmed Rashid. "Osama bin Laden has not been driven underground or lost touch with his followers," he writes. "Al-Qaeda is using the internet extensively to communicate with its supporters and to further its aim of creating new bases from which to organise terrorist attacks. ...