Worst epic science fail you have seen in sci-fi?

[selden]

The publication Google finds most often cited is his contribution to a NASA conference that took place in March, 1993:

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi....022855.pdf

A more recent publication by Vinge (June, 2008) http://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/ethi...ingularity mentions that 1993 essay but nothing earlier.