Scientific methods.

You might not have heard of Augustus the Strong. He was Elector of Saxony (and later King of Poland and Duke of Lithuania) in the late 16 and early 1700's. His nickname was due to his impressive physical strength - he liked to show off by breaking horseshoes with his bare hands, and he was noted for his ability at the sport of fox-tossing (in which, yes, you grab a fox and hurl it as high in the air as you possibly can, with unfortunate consequences for the fox when it lands. I suppose anything passed for entertainment before television). Augustus was also quite incredibly rich and was desperate to increase his wealth further by using alchemy to turn base metal into gold.
Perhaps ironically, he spent a large slice of his fortune trying achieve this goal and, to his dying day, believed that magically creating more gold was possible and he would succeed if he only spent a little more money on researching it.

Anyway, I couldn't help but notice yesterday that Peter Tatchell (of all people) was being quoted as saying that the only reason tidal energy systems aren't economically viable is because not enough public money has been spent on research.

For some reason that reminded me of Augustus. Can't think why.