Embarrassments come in various sizes, but few can rival in sheer, mind-blowing magnitude, some of the mistakes that have been perpetrated in the name of scientific advance. In the past, scientific blunders were made largely through ignorance and superstition. Today's scientists are more sophisticated in their errors, yet the end result is the same - the brightest (and often the most big-headed) members of society can sometimes be astonishingly wrong. Examples investigated here include:

• early scientific blunders - the flat earth theory, the earth-centred universe blunder and the scientific rejection of the Copernican theory
• the scientist and the bishop - the great evolution debate
• the Piltdown Man hoax
• the Tay Bridge collapse
• Chernobyl
• the Hubble telescope blunder
• the Challenger space shuttle disaster
• the cold fusion affair "Scientific Blunders" is by turns investigative and humorous. It is an account of the errors into which seemingly infallible humans have fallen, and gives a useful perspective of the risks and benefits of scientific advance.