That's the top answer (https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-of-the-worst-academic-pa...) - and deservedly so!

For those not clicking on the link (like me), it's Andrew Wakefield - who published a blatantly false paper in The Lancet in 1998 [1], linking MMR vaccines to autism [2] - triggering the anti-vaccination movement, leading to a resurgence of hitherto eradicated diseases [3].

[1] - http://briandeer.com/mmr/lancet-paper.htm

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_MMR_autism_fraud

[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield#Epidemics,_ef...

Same. It's also been proved that he was making it up but people turn a blind eye to that part of it.