• July 25, 1844 - English physicist and chemist John Dalton dies. Dalton is known for having been an early advocate of atomic theory in modern science, though it would be nearly a century after his work that it was more generally adopted by the scientific community.
• July 22, 1887 - German experimental physicist Gustav Ludwig Hertz is born. Hertz is the nephew of Heinrich Hertz (who demonstrated the existence of electromagnetic waves). Gustav Hertz, along with James Franck, performed the Franck-Hertz experiments on inelastic electron collisions in gases. This work earned the pair of them the 1925 Nobel Prize in Physics.
• July 21, 1969 - Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin become the first human beings to walk on the Moon's surface.
• July 24, 1979 - English physicist Sir James Chadwick dies. Chadwick discovered the existence of the neutrally charged atomic particle, the neutron. The neutron, with a lack of electrical charge, is useful in triggering nuclear fission, or "splitting the atom." He received the 1935 Nobel Prize in Physics for this discovery. Because of this work, Chadwick reputedly gained the nickname "Jimmy Neutron."
• July 27, 2005 - NASA grounds the space shuttles after the space shuttle Discovery sheds a piece of foam from its external fuel tank larger than that which caused the destruction of the Columbia in 2003. The Discovery foam did not strike the spacecraft and caused no actual difficulties to the launch or mission.

Still, physics isn't without its own issues and it seems that nuclear fusion is a recurring theme, especially "cold fusion." I recall hearing stories in middle school in 1989 about the development of cold fusion which, ultimately, proved to be false hype.

Nobel prize-winning chemist Irving Langmuir coined the phrase pathological science in 1953 for such situations where scientists are repeatedly tricked into reporting and believing false results ... and which seem to "not go away" even after having been dismissed frequently.

Such is the case at Purdue University, where I will soon be earning my M.S. degree in Mathematics Education. They have their own little controversy regarding a researcher who reported achieving nuclear fusion in the laboratory. The work by Rusi Taleyarkhan was actually published in 2002, while working at Tennessee's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, but he's at Purdue now and their own inquiry has come up with some issues regarding the work.

Oddly, Taleyarkhan was cleared by a Purdue investigation committee in early 2007, but a second set of allegations surfaced secretly and on these allegations the committee has found that he has performed misconduct. The details of the alleged misconduct can be found in the complete report, but don't seem to have much bearing on the overall validity of the original paper, but instead seem to be focused on mis-statements and mis-representations he has made since then.

The major allegation (pp. 15-22 of the report) is that Taleyarkhan helped another researcher perform an experiment confirming his earlier results and then promoted this work as "independent confirmation" of his results. This would, if true, certainly fall under the heading of a "pathological science."