Is it posible to manually set istream fail bit in C++11

I was making an

class object{
  //data...
public:
  friend std::istream& operator>>(std::istream & in,object & o)
  { char
      c,
      d
    ;
   in>>c>>d;
   if(c==d){
     /*set the fail bit some how*/
     in.putback(d);
     in.putback(c);
   }
   else o.set_data(c,d);
   return in;
  }

}

I was looking at the documentation (not well) but couldn't find a proper way to set the fail bit. The reason I care is I'd like to be able to while(std::cin>>obj)/*do stuff*/; like one can do with an int. But if I currently do this there would be an infinite loop any time there was an error. -_- Is setting the fail bit possible or am I going to have to work with this problem a different way?