The guy had an experiment, his explanation for the results were utter quackery. I don't think the people at NASA expected his explanation was the right one, but they didn't have one so they replicated. MIT had an explanation of the results that was not due to thermal effects, and wasn't the originator's explanation. It didn't upend thermodynamics. The problem wasn't people exploring a tricky experiment, it was people buying in to a specific explanation of the experiment prematurely.
