While there can be significant deviations from the practical application of something (anything), to the actual/formal definition of it, when we are discussing that something (whatever it may be), we are bound by language and reason to discuss what is commonly defined and accepted for that something to be for the general public, hence its formal definition.
Noone can dive into the recesses of someone’s mind and dig out what they think/believed/learned what science or even simple things like football, are. Billions of people exist, hence billions of slightly different concepts and interpretations of those things exist in each head. Therefore when we talk about football, at most we might ask “american or the rest of the world kind of football” and suddenly we all know what is being discussed, even if we have a slightly different idea of football in our minds. (you will see where football fits in this post later 
)
In science and religion, where things are more complicated, since it is a more complicated concept, the variations can be more complex or surprisingly simple.
Case in point:
That is what you think you are doing, in terms of what you think/perceive/understand that religion is or is defined. However, all your examples are just cases where a simple belief (even one just based on trust on authority) has replaced the formulation of an actual logical opinion based on knowledge and critical thinking of some people, on that particular issue.
However that is just a misguided belief, not a religion.
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Automatic faith towards doctors and medicine? Sure there are people that think that “if the doctors says it, then it is good” and never read the medication instructions or others that go the other way and go “if the big pharma sells it, then I am not taking it” and those end up believing some other “alternatives” (which are usually more expensive - ah, but “escaping the Matrix” is never free. What a coincidence each time
). Sure, both cases can be called out for excessive (and even misguided) trust, but “religion”? Since when? -
Flateathers actually come from an actual religion since most of them base their lunacy on the Bible, so they are not a good example on wonky science, by default.
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History being written by the victors is a commonly accepted fact, but still none of us has a time machine. When someone tells you that Cleopatra was a Ptolemaic queen of Egypt 2000+ years ago, you cannot say “naaah, my grandmother said that I don’t care what they tell you in school, Cleopatra was black”, unless you want to get hired by Netflix
Still no religion though. I am Greek, I assure you that I’ve yet to revere or assign any religious belief to any historical book of our 3000+ years of recorded history and I am very aware that a lot of it is “historical marketing” of the time. Historians know it too, if you read up on that, and most serious historians leave a lot of caveats in their writings. -
Some science is expensive - E.g. that quantum collider in CERN is top tier money. There is a lot of down to earth repeatable science though. Convincing a coalition of nations or investors that your project needs money still is not a religion, just because you made them “believe that this will make them money”.
I did get the idea that you conflate beliefs with religion.
But that is not the definition of religion.
Here is a hint on how complicated things are (especially if we dwelve on how you can create a tax-exempt church/religion in the USA):
So, to put things in a simple perspective, what a simple non-legal definition of religion contains at least these aspects:
a) Some sort of creed and form of worship
b) A code of doctrine and discipline
You can add a lot of things to create other stuff (like the IRS does in order to strictly define what a church is - the formal purveyors of religion ), but you need those two things in order to have a bare-minimum religion, as defined by the lexicons.
In that regard, I’ll have to inform you that in comparison to your examples, the average Greek football hooligan/ultra is far more religious (and consciously so! 
) than the “mere beliefs” examples you presented.
Look at what they are chanting (Olympiakos and PAO are the two most prominent teams):
“Θρύλε, Θεέ μου, Ολυμπιακέ μου!” ("Legend, my God, Olympiakos!)
“ΠΑΟ, θρησκεία, Θύρα 13!” (PAO, our religion, Gate 13!)
Mumbo-jumbo for the uninitiated, of course, but par for the course within their “religion”. Heck, if you think about it, if those dudes were hooligans in the USA, they could actually classify as a church and be tax exempt.
Proof
– Distinct legal existence (yes.)
– Recognized creed and form of worship (yes.)
– Definite and distinct ecclesiastical government (yes.)
– Formal code of doctrine and discipline (yes.)
– Distinct religious history (yes.)
– Membership not associated with any other church or denomination (yes.)
– Organization of ordained ministers (yes.)
– Ordained ministers selected after completing prescribed courses of study (yes.)
– Literature of its own (yes.)
– Established places of worship (yes. The football stadium)
– Regular congregations (yes.)
– Regular religious services (yes.)
– Sunday schools for the religious instruction of the young (yes. Most games are on Sunday anywah)
– Schools for the preparation of its members (yes.)
Hooligans are actually VERY organised. Some churches could learn a few tricks from them haha.
So, my point remains. We cannot play “dress up” with the definitions of things when we talk about them, else we end up discussing about other things, in a false (hopefully not religious ) belief that we have the correct meaning of said things in our minds.
Well no.
When we talk about science, we talk about what science is and does, and if we want to insert a new definition and caveats or a very particular part of what science is (e.g. mathematics, as a science is much more different than the aformentioned history or archaeology), that’s fine, as long as we do not pretend that the part of science that we are talking about is “the whole of science” (I urge you to read “the relative and the absolute” if you want more details on that concept).
Thus we cannot talk about “the science as defined in our minds” and then blame “the science as it exists in the world”. That only creates confusion.
Same thing about when we talk about religion, we talk about what religion is and does. If there is a specific formal religion or personal religious belief you want to focus on, for sure you can pinpoint that, but you cannot turn a “I trust my doctor” to a religious belief and expect anyone to follow along with that non-standard definition of the term. What’s next then? “I trust my baker to not put poison in my bread. Well, I am very religious, I’ve been buying bread from that dude for the past 20 years and I am still here. My prayers work!”.
That’s not a religion, sorry.
On fusion I have no expertise. I understand that it is a complicated and very tricky issue because what nature can do naturally, we might need a lot of complex machinery to achieve. So, while the Sun might be a fantastic fusion reactor, replicating that on earth might not be easy or even feasable. In that regard, fusion has always been, as you said, a “just around the corner” kind of thing (I remember vividly reading a Mickey Mouse story titled “The fantastic TOKAMAK”, thirty years ago - it still remains fantastic 
), that keeps evading us. At least it is being tried on and if the result is that it cannot be done with the current technology we possess, then it is an acceptable result for the time being.
Again, words matter.
A ragpull in an altcoin is a scam.
Selling “special water that cures a rare ailment” is a scam.
In order to have a “scam” you need malicious intent and conscious deceptions concerning the intentions and facts around your project. We do not get to redefine words, and especially not legal terms.
Legitimate research by a multitude of scientific teams that just fails to deliver a marketable result, is not anywhere near the definition of a scam, unless they know that it cannot ever work and they are decieving all the investors. I am open to the idea of some of those teams falling into that category (let’s not be naive - there are such people in every profession after all), but not all of them (unless there is actual proof for that), therefore the whole sector cannot be called a scam, without a significant body of proof backing up that statement.
This can happen tomorrow if we just like to hit the milestone and call it a day. It is not as if fusion is a total bust and doesn’t work at all. It does produce energy.
What does not happen is a net positive production of energy, therefore there is no cost efficiency, thus no gain (literal and monetary).
That might not probably happen within my lifetime, if I were to guess.
P.S.
Edit: Added a link to the “Fantastic TOKAMAK”. Turns out it was made in 1983. Sometimes the internet has the most obscure things preserved/recorded. 