Kary Banks Mullis is an American chemist, Ph.D. and a Nobel laureate.  Mullis is famous for winning the Nobel prize in 1993 for inventing a technique called polymerase chain reaction (PCR) which is used to make copies of DNA in a laboratory setting.  But Mullis's actual contributions to the technique are highly controversial.  Professor Kjell Kleppe and Nobel laureate H. Gobind Khorana co-wrote a 20 page paper in 1971 that described the PCR technique.  On 18th June 1969 Kleppe presented his work at a Gordon Conference in New Hampshire.  Here Kleppe performed a standard PCR reaction infront of an audience.  One of the attendees was Professor Stuart Linn, who then used Kleppe's material in his own teachings to his students.  One of these students happened to be Karry Mullis.  So the idea that Mullis discovered PCR is patently false.  A contribution to the PCR technique that Mullis actually participated in was the discovery of a protein which dramatically reduced the cost of PCR.  This revolutionized the in biotech industry.  Co-workers from a company called Cetus disputed how much of a role Mullis had in the discovery of the Taq polymerase.  In the end Mullis ended up taking the Nobel Prize while Cetus went home with a cool $300 million when they sold the patent to Roche.
       

Mullis has publicly claimed that HIV does not cause aids and 1 in 250 people has had HIV for hundreds of years.  He is a skeptic of global warming and claims CFS's don't harm the ozone layer.  Even though he was never called to the stand, Mullis was on the defenses expert witness list during OJ Simpson's trial. The New York Times writes:

He doesn't believe the ozone layer is receding. ... He even attacks Avogadro's constant, which is used to calculate the number of atoms or molecules in any chemical. Mullis says Avogadro's number, which is 6.0221367 $(4$) 1023 (that's a 1 followed by 23 zeros), is too big. (Well, it is.) It gets worse. Mullis practices telepathy with his friend Harry, and he had a girlfriend once who traveled on the astral plane to extract a nitrous oxide tube from his mouth. He had what is commonly called a ''missing time'' experience that hints at alien abduction. He thinks that astrology is valid, or at least testable. (Of course, it is testable.)

Mullis says he found the astral plain through conventional science, and claims he saw a "glowing raccoon" which spoke to him, saying "Good evening, doctor."   Mullis later wrote:

"I wouldn't try to publish a scientific paper about these things, because I can't do any experiments. I can't make glowing raccoons appear. I can't buy them from a scientific supply house to study. I can't cause myself to be lost again for several hours. But I don't deny what happened. It's what science calls anecdotal, because it only happened in a way that you can't reproduce. But it happened."

Sources:
Kleppe K, Ohtsuka E, Kleppe R, Molineux I, Khorana HG. Studies on polynucleotides. XCVI. Repair replications of short synthetic DNA's as catalyzed by DNA polymerases. J Mol Biol. 1971 Mar 14;56(2):341–361
PCR: Experimental Milieu + the Concept
New York Times,Weird Science, And now for someone completely different: Kary Mullis, Nobel Prize winner., October 11, 1998
Brenda Denzler, The Lure of the EdgeScientific Passions, Religious Beliefs, and the Pursuit of UFOs, Chapter 3
Mullis 1998, 136.
Salon, Nobel dude, Kary Mullis revolutionized genetic research but thumbs his nose at the scientific establishment. It thumbs its nose right back., William Speed Weed, March 29, 2000

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