Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Blondlot and the N-Rays --
2. Paradigms Enow: Some Mirages of Biology. Gurvich and his mitogenic radiation. The curse of the death-ray. Abderhalden and the protective enzymes. The case of the amorous toad. Memory transfer, or eat your mathematics --
3. Aberrations of Physics: Irving Langmuir Investigates. Capturing electrons. Alison's magneto-optical effect. Langmuir's rules --
4. Nor any Drop to Drink: the Tale of Polywater --
5. The Wilder Shores of Credulity --
6. Energy Unlimited --
7. What the Doctor Ordered --
8. Science, Chauvinism and Bigotry --
9. The Climate of Fear. The tragedy of Soviet genetics. The spread of the contagion. Soviet physics: idealism, pragmatism and the bomb. Is there a Marxist chemistry? --
10. Science in the Third Reich: Bigotry, Racism and Extinction. The roots of fascist biology. The Ahnenerbe: Himmler the intellectual. Die deutsche Physik, its friends and enemies. A deutsche Chemie. Anti-Semitism and mathematics. The consequences of the Nazi incursion into science --
11. Nature Nurtured: the Rise and Fall of Eugenics. The birth of eugenics. Eugenics and politics in Europe and America. Eugenics in the Third Reich. Eugenic nemesis in the Soviet Union. The rise and fall of eugenics: a pathological science.

Tells the stories of incidents in the history of scientific discovery in which faulty conclusions were reached by scientists who, despite evidence to the contrary, insisted their findings were correct.