Richard Feynmann as nanotech's ventriloquist's dummy

Anyone who studies the history of creative thinking and problem solving will discover that even the greatest thinkers generate plenty of errors along with their productive insights. For example, biologists in 2010 don't teach Charles Darwin's speculation about "gemmules" as the mechanism of hereditary, except in a historical context as a detour from the true path discovered by Gregor Mendel, because in that instance, Darwin got it wrong. Regardless of his stature today, Darwin's useful contributions to biology don't validate his patently bad ideas.

Observers of the social movement surrounding Eric Drexler's "nanotechnology" have noted the confabulated history, really more of a mythology, which has arisen around Richard Feynmann's long-obscure and quickly forgotten talk in 1959, "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom." As this editorial says:

Hoping to dissociate their nanotechnology work from dystopian scenarios and fringe futurists, some prominent mainstream researchers have taken to belittling Mr. Drexler and his theories. And that is where Feynman re-enters the story: Mr. Drexler regularly invokes the 1959 lecture, which broadly corresponds with his own thinking. As he told Mr. Regis, the science writer: "It's kind of useful to have a Richard Feynman to point to as someone who stated some of the core conclusions. You can say to skeptics, 'Hey, argue with him!'" It is thanks to Mr. Drexler that we remember Feynman's lecture as crucial to nanotechnology, since Mr. Drexler has long used Feynman's reputation as a shield for his own.

What happens to Drexler's reputation if Feynmann's "shield" either doesn't exist, or has gaping holes in it?

In other words, what if Drexler has created a huge distraction, now going on for a whole generation, from reality-based ways of solving our problems by latching onto Richard Feynmann's version of "gemmules"?