I think it's unfair to lump the faster-than-light-neutrino experiment in as bad science. They pretty much said "this is really odd, please suggest your explanations".
<Minor Spoiler Alert>
A very similar experiment today - <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/07/120709-arsenic-space-nasa-science-felisa-wolfe-simon/" rel="nofollow">http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/07/120709-arsen...</a>
The Arsenic Life claim that was much ballyhooed by NASA but turned out to to be bad controls in the experiment protocols.<p>In that case as in the Poly-water case, the reason for the initial strange results turned out to be contamination of the Samples.
In the Arsenic Life case however the authors continue to deny it and still claim their results are valid. The lead author is now attached to a prestigious institution still doing "science".
When ever I read articles like this, as well as they are written, I always feel like cutting to the chase: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywater" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywater</a>
Reminds me of a lot of political discourse - it is easy to be skeptical of people you want to be wrong, it is hard to be skeptical of people you agree with.
Even more curious is that if Peter Kollman (referenced below) hadn't died of cancer, he would likely have shared this year's Nobel Prize for molecular dynamics:<p><a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v233/n5321/abs/233550a0.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v233/n5321/abs/233550a0...</a><p>Whoever said there are no second acts in America was crazy.
Water is pretty weird without going too far out of your way to come up with new weirdnesses.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice#Phases" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice#Phases</a>
A much closer parallel is the case of N-Rays [0]. Major scientific sensation that eventually turned out to be wishful observation.<p>[0]<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-rays" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-rays</a>
> They proposed that instead of the Van der Waals forces that normally draw water molecules gently together, polywater was composed of molecules locked in place by stronger chemical bonds, somehow catalyzed by the quartz capillary tubes.<p>Aren't water molecules held together by relatively strong Hydrogen bonds? And if there are stronger bonds in polywater, what are they, then, covalent bonds?
This book is an excellent account of the whole fiasco:
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Polywater-Felix-Franks/dp/0262560291/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1383955774&sr=8-1&keywords=0262560291" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Polywater-Felix-Franks/dp/0262560291/r...</a>
With any of these scientific breakthrough the proof is in the pudding. They've got to get some sort of prototype invention that uses their science to validate it. If they can't get their prototype device to work then something's wrong with the science.