[dchichkov]

Looked at it a bit more, I think this story could be a good illustration of confirmation bias in research [1].

They've probably tried their best, but it is really really really easy to make a mistake when you are designing an experiment. Or post-processing your experimental data. Or plotting the results. Or doing your math.

As it was noticed in the comments below, it looks like in that particular case an outcome of an experiment was decided using insufficient (n = 1) number of samples [ http://www.getbatterybox.com/bos.html#highexpl ]. Also there is at least one mistake in the math, a 50Wh battery can not be charged from a discharged state to 80% by 5 Volt 1 Amp power source in 4.5 hours [ http://www.getbatterybox.com/index.html#faq ]. The math is wrong.

[1] As per Wikipedia article: confirmation bias (also called confirmatory bias or myside bias) is the tendency of people to favor information that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. People also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position.