Column Science & Society

Here are the Top 10 times scientific imagination failed

Sometimes scientists dismiss an idea if they can’t think of a way to test it

By Tom Siegfried

Contributing Correspondent

- More than 2 years ago

apparatus of the Daya Bay experiment, with shiny orbs attached to long walls

Scientists once doubted that neutrinos could ever be observed. Today, detectors around the world (including at the Daya Bay experiment in China, shown) pick up signals of these ghostly particles.

Roy Kaltschmidt, LBNL/U.S. Department of Energy/Flickr

Science, some would say, is an enterprise that should concern itself solely with cold, hard facts.