A transcription of the original talk by Langmuir ... and a rebuttal claiming that pathological science isn't pathological.
ESP research published in Nature. See middle of second column on p. 604 for the easiest test to understand and then the last page of this anonymous tell-all pamphlet that explains how it was done. The pamphlet also editorializes (on p. 13-14)
Get to top physicists. They're the easiest of all scientists to fool. If they already believe in psi fields, they don't want you to fail so they unconsciously allow loose controls. Try to get to physicists who have already been sucked into some crazy cult, like Scientology. They're the prize suckers!
Summary of the short-lived 17 keV neutrino. It didn't last, so "good science" won in the end, but at its heyday it had many of the hallmarks of pathological science.
Cold fusion has recently reared its head again, in professional and popular contexts, though it has had a hard core of believers the whole time. Here are the original articles by Pons and Fleischmann (J. Electroanal. Chem. and erratum, and Nature); at the link you can see "related articles" that dispute (mostly) Pons and Fleischmann's claim. Pons and Fleischmann were supposed to publish their original article in Nature but it failed to make it past the referees. This Nature editorial warned that the much-anticipated paper would not be appearing; contrast its genteel official tone with a private quote from the Nature editor, concerning Pons and Fleischmann's failure to perform the control experiment that the referees required in order to accept the paper for publication:
How is this astonishing oversight to be explained to students repeatedly being drilled in the need that control experiments should be as conspicuous in the design of an investigation as those believed to display the phenomenon under study? And how should the neglect be explained to the world at large?
There is no convincing explanation, only extenuating circumstances. Self-imposed secrecy has evidently hampered the investigators, understandably buoyed up by their belief that they had discovered a remarkable new phenomenon and fearful that too much talk about it would give other bigger battalions a chance to steal a march on them. Yet it is unthinkable that, if the authors had felt able from the outset to stand in front of routine laboratory colloquia and give a full account of their work, the question "Have you tried it with ordinary water?" would not have been raised. This glaring lapse from accepted practice is another casualty of people's need to be first with reports of discovery and with the patents that follow.