If we change "definitely don't work" to "have the following so far insurmountable challenges", it addresses cases like this. Hardware scaling limitations on neural networks have been known to be a limitation for a long time - Minsky and Papert touched in this in Perceptrons in 1969.

The Hall would then end up containing a spectrum ranging from useless ideas to hard problems. Distinguishing between the two based on documented challenges would likely be possible in many cases.