Motivated by the recent attempts to violate the weak cosmic censorship
conjecture for near-extreme black-holes, we consider the possibility of
overcharging a near-extreme Reissner-Nordstr\"om black hole by the quantum
tunneling of charged particles. We consider the scattering of spin-0 and
spin-1/2 particles by the black hole in a unified framework and obtain
analytically, for the first time, the pertinent reflection and transmission
coefficients without any small charge approximation. Based on these results, we
propose some gedanken experiments that could lead to the violation of the weak
cosmic censorship conjecture due to the (classically forbidden) absorption of
small energy charged particles by the black hole. As for the case of scattering
in Kerr spacetimes, our results demonstrate explicitly that scalar fields are
subject to (electrical) superradiance phenomenon, while spin-1/2 fields are
not. Superradiance impose some limitations on the gedanken experiments
involving spin-0 fields, favoring, in this way, the mechanisms for creation of
a naked singularity by the quantum tunneling of spin-1/2 charged fermions. We
also discuss the implications that vacuum polarization effects and quantum
statistics might have on these gedanken experiments. In particular, we show
that they are not enough to prevent the absorption of incident small energy
particles and, consequently, the formation of a naked singularity.Comment: 9 pages; Final version to appear in PR