Proven?
Okay, I’m clear then.
For now.
I misread that as ‘psychics community’, and was both confused and impressed.
I’m a scientist.
My name isn’t actually Smeghead.
hangs head in shame
He made the Sharpie company a fortune, though. 
Dr. Cyril Burt. He published some very important studies on identical twins, which were often cited and used in psychological research. It was discovered that nearly all of his later data was probably fraudulent.
I once read a good account of the incident in a book about scientific frauds. The author felt that Fleischmann and Pons believed their results were true when they first reported them. But they got rushed into going public before they were able to substantiate them.
When the post-report publicity began to raise questions, they could have accepted the results and suffered nothing worse than embarrassment for having been too hasty. But the pressure got to them and they knowingly participated in the attempted deceptions. So while they didn’t start out as frauds, they ended up that way.
Little Joey Mengele did some research using some pretty unethical tactics. There is also the whole “Unit 731” band of merrymakers.
One of the big things driving the various “peaceful nuclear explosion” programs was that at the time it was looking somewhat likely that a comprehensive test ban treaty was on the horizon. People like Teller were hardcore believers in nuclear deterrence, and in order to have a credible deterrent it was thought you had to be able to demonstrate your stockpile worked. The test ban treaty put that in jeopardy, so the PNE’s were designed to be a plausible reason to continue work on nuclear explosions. I think it’s debatable whether the boosters of those programs really believed they’d ever be dredging harbors with nukes and such or if it was just a way to potentially skirt arms control rules.
Anyone who can list “FOX News Panelist” on their resume.
“Bad Science” by Gary Taubes was a good book on the subject by the way.
The harbor idea was moving forward at full speed. Teller went to Alaska and heavily promoted the idea, promising jobs and new commerce. The territorial government went along with the notion and everyone was all smiles until a small, vocal minority of university activists and Alaska Natives launched what was to become the first environmental impact study ever conducted. The results, which included radiation fallout levels (drifted over from Soviet nuke tests) in lichen, the prime source of food for caribou (a food staple of Alaska Natives), killed the project.
Conrad Murray, Michael Jackson’s enabler. did you see the 150 pictures of the house taken by the coroner? Looked like a homeless camp, but Jacko cleaned his plate…
Anil Potti, cancer researcher, data manipulator, author of a bunch of papers that have been retracted. One of the statisticians who uncovered his fraud was a college acquaintance of mine and is featured on a 60 Minutes segment about the story.
One of the most poignant aspects of the story: imagine that you or someone you love is dying of cancer. Standard treatment is failing. Time is running out- there’s only time to try one last-ditch, experimental treatment. Over 100 such patients spent what may have been their last option on trying Potti’s treatment over other possible choices. And it was fake.
This sounds fun. You got a link?
Wow!
Now that’s a mad scientist for ya!
Fools! I’ll destroy them all! BWAH-HA-HA-HAAAA!
There’s Hwang Woo-suk, the dude who claimed to have succeeded in creating human embryonic stem cells by cloning. I seem to recall that he attributed his success to his dexterity learned from using metal chopsticks all his life.
Sorry I’m a bit limited by lack of technology and having trouble finding it - wasn’t there someone who claimed to have cloned a human - somewhere like N Korea?
The people who allowed Vioxx to be placed on the market. I sure was glad that was pulled from the worldwide market on my day off.
However, my brother worked with a woman who had a rare form of arthritis, and she said that was the only medicine that really worked for her, and she did not experience any side effects from it.
And Flora Schreiber, who wrote the book “Sybil”. That was an enormous travesty of medical malpractice and a huge breach of journalistic ethics.