"But the sad thing is, you could probably show stuff like this on a TV series as a "this is what research produces" and the majority of people wouldn't know any better."

It's not unlike what we have in France with the Bogdanov brothers [1]. They are pretty much scientific impostors but they are still quite popular and sell a lot of unintelligible books.

I don't blame people for being duped. But rather the medias and journalists that put them in the spotlight instead of competent and honest scientists.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_affair