Joe Newman
From RationalWiki
Joseph Newman is an inventor, originally from Mississippi, who has for years been trying to sell a high-voltage motor (powered by a large number of batteries connected in series) as a free energy device. While his device was published in the 1980s in such fora as Discover magazine, Newman has steadfastly avoided refereed journals. The reason for this is that after a great deal of obfuscation and rigged testing, as well as repeated (and mostly ignored) challenges to debate a PhD physicist on the matter, Newman lost an argument on the Senate floor with then-senator John Glenn (due to his astronaut training, Glenn was likely one of the few in the Senate who understood Newman's claims) and was pwned in a test by the National Bureau of Standards that showed that his device could not produce more power than it used.
A history of the whole sordid affair can be found in Voodoo Science by Bob Park (Oxford University Press, 2000), and more information can be found through his Wikipedia article.
