5 World-Renowned Experts Who Were Just Straight-Up Crackpots

Matthews had a well-honed demonstration too, including bits where he stopped a motorcycle engine and even killed a mouse at short range with his ray. With the right funding, the scientist claimed, he could make his death ray powerful enough to destroy airplane engines mid-flight, or even "annihilate" entire armies and cities. And because headlines with the words "death ray" in them sell about a bajillion copies, publications like The New York Times, Time, Le Matin, Popular Mechanics, and Popular Science Monthly all heralded the loony Englishman as the greatest genius to have ever lived. This, in turn, drew the attention of the British military, including Sir Winston Churchill himself, who wanted to see what this war-winning weapon could do.

At this point, the death ray blew up in Matthew's face. Figuratively speaking, of course, because the laser was too weak to cause any real damage. When the army asked for a demonstration, three of its scientists were so unimpressed that they stepped in front of the beam to show how pointless it was. Furious, Matthews left England and announced his intent to sell his death ray to a foreign -- maybe even enemy -- country. But no one wanted a laser that was barely powerful enough to scan a barcode.

(Warning: If pictures of animals with the wrong amounts of heads will ruin your lunch, you might want to skip this one.)

Dr. Sergio Canavero is a graduate of Italy's University of Turin, where he presumably got his degree in Practical Frankensteining. A successful neurosurgeon, Dr. Canavero had worked in a hospital in Turin, but left due to creative differences like "He won't shut the hell up about chopping people's heads off." That's because Dr. Canavero had decided that he would become the first man to ever successfully transplant a human head onto a different body. How well is that going? Well, let's ask his patients:

After publishing dozens of research papers, Canavero and his decapitation-happy team started the HEAVEN ("head anastomosis venture") project by slappin' two heads on one mouse, as well as swapping a monkey head without reattaching the spinal cord. Then, in 2017 he finally announced they had successfully transplanted a head between two human ... cadavers. Surely a feat any of us could achieve with access to a morgue, a bone saw, and a strong stomach.

Despite none of his findings being properly vetted or replicated, and being called an "immoral shyster" with "no proven science to back up his hype" who deserves only "contempt and condemnation," the PR-savvy Canavero managed to draw a lot of media interest, especially after he obtained a willing, living human volunteer to get the HEAVEN treatment (one way or the other). But that unfortunate soul will have to wait while the good doctor is pleading with Mark Zuckerberg and anyone else high on cash and low on empathy to fund this mostly well-meaning murder.

You'd think that being exposed as a waste-dumping gold smuggler would put a dent in your credibility as a scientist, but no! After lying low (being jailed) for a while, and then getting a shiny new engineering degree (from an American diploma mill), Rossi burst back on the scene in 2011, claiming he had cracked the Philosopher's Stone of modern science: cold fusion. He unveiled his energy catalyzer, or E-Cat, which appeared to generate power from thin air.

How does it work? Nobody knows! Like a shitty Vegas magician, Rossi has adamantly refused to let anyone see the internal workings of his invention, and only allows for demonstrations in carefully controlled environments. The fact that one Australian engineer has stated that the excess power his machines appear to create could easily be faked with some creative wiring is probably a coincidence.

Rossi claimed that by 2013, he'd produce millions of E-Cats, which would each power an entire household while only being about the size of a MacBook. We guess ours got lost in the mail. This totally unproven tech has gotten a lot of attention from heavy-hitters such as Phys.org, Forbes, Scientific American, and, disappointingly, NASA.

Rossi even managed to close a deal with the newly formed Industrial Heat LLC (definitely not a shell corporation), to perform a conclusive third-party test to confirm his genius. And all he asked for the privilege was $100 million. He managed to cash in $11.5 million up front, but Industrial Heat refused to pay him the rest after realizing they had "worked for over three years to substantiate the results claimed by Mr. Rossi from the E-Cat technology -- all without success." Without success? It sure seemed that Rossi achieved exactly what he set out to do: become rich by generating energy (that is, buzz) out of thin air.

Also not helping was the fact that Japan's scientific circles were about as hot on public criticism as they were on peer review -- that is to say, not at all. So although many actual experts personally believed Fujimura was a bag of hot air held together by a thin veneer of bullshit, few were willing to challenge him on record. But you know who has no problems making sweeping judgments of careful and nuanced scientific findings? Why, the media of course!

All along, journalists were watching the celebrity archaeologist like a hawk. And in 2000, they were finally able to catch old "God's Hands" burying fake artifacts for his team to find later. Because of his celebrity status, he had been present in some capacity at around 180 digs over the years, and everything found on any of those sites was now called into question. It set back an entire country's archaeology studies for decades. Oh hey, we've just discovered something interesting ourselves: Shinichi Fujimura sounds like kind of an asshole.

Taylor Daine is an Indianapolis-based writer and comedian who makes bad tweets at @turtledovejones.

E. Reid Ross has a couple books, Nature is the Worst: 500 reasons you'll never want to go outside again and Canadabis: The Canadian Weed Reader, both available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

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