ATHENS — Greece’s attempt to lure top scientists back to their homeland after the trauma of the financial crisis has stalled an ambitious program to reverse the brain drain descended into fiasco.

A group of professors who hoped to bring back young researchers through a much-advertised program financed with EU funds are now feeling betrayed, having been left waiting for years only to find out the program won’t happen.

To rub salt into the wound, no one from the government bothered to inform them that the scheme was dead, they said.