This study provides a comprehensive critique - forensic, historical, and theoretical - of the moral panic paradigm, using empirically grounded ethnographic research to argue that the panic paradigm suffers from fundamental flaws that make it a myth rather than a viable academic perspective. Bill Thompson is a sociologist from the UK, where he was a Practicing Associate of the British Academy of Experts, and taught at Cambridge, Essex, and Reading Universities. In 2004, he relocated to the USA, where he has worked with the local Teamsters Union Chapter while teaching at SUNY and Hartwick Colleges. Andy Williams is Principal Lecturer & Course Leader in BSc (Hons) Criminology and Forensics at the Institute of Criminal Justice Studies at the University of Portsmouth.