1. The Cold Fusion Incident

Fusion power has been heralded as the solution to our future power needs. After all, it promises to provide a nearly limitless supply of energy with minimal environmental impact. The current problem, though, is that it takes a tremendous amount of energy to fuse together nuclei.

So, when Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann announced to a hungry scientific world that they'd discovered cold fusion in 1989 (a process that supposedly used much less energy), the duo were welcomed with splashy headlines.

Other scientists were dubious, and when Pons and Fleischmann withdrew their paper from Nature magazine and refused to answer questions, charges of fraud were made. Pons and Fleischmann never gave enough details of the experiment to allow others to replicate it, and more than 10 years later no one has been able to replicate their results.

There are still scientists who believe Pons and Fleischmann were on to something, but the premature claims of cold fusion cast such doubt on these two researchers that they were doomed to ignominy.