The magazine's investigation of 9/11 conspiracy theories was the first of its kind. Chertoff has stated that the magazine's editors decided to investigate 9/11 Myths after seeing Jimmy Walter's full page ad in "The New York Times" for a book called Painful Questions. In a June, 2006 column in Scientific American magazine, Skeptics Society president Dr. Michael Shermer called the Popular Mechanics article "the single best debunking of this conspiratorial codswallop." In 2006, the magazine published the book "", which greatly expanded on the original story, including new myths and much more detail than could fit in the original, magazine article.