Ceilidh

Michael Zey
futurist3000@aol.com

Authors:                  Sharon Begley

Abstract:

"The question I get more than any other is, 'Are you still doing this?',
" says Prof. [Steven Jones]. "The answer is yes, and what we are seeing
is very difficult to explain outside of cold fusion. The repeatability
of these experiments now approaches 80%." Although he still detects no
excess heat, the telltale signs of nuclear fusion "make us conclude that
we are seeing new physics."

"If you 'know' that cold fusion is impossible, then you don't have to pay
attention to these results," says Prof. [Peter Hagelstein], an award- winning
DOE physicist before being ostracized for his work in the theory of cold
fusion. "The initial criticism was that people needed to do the [heat measurements]
right, but now that some groups have spent millions of dollars doing just
that, the critics still won't read the papers."

What these claims need is critical scrutiny by skeptics. That's how science
normally functions. But in cold fusion, it isn't. And that's the worst
pathology of all.
Copyright (c) 2003, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

Full Text:

'WELL, WE'RE HERE," said physicist Peter Hagelstein to the 150 scientists
at the 10th International Conference on Cold Fusion in Cambridge, Mass.,
last week. "Many people in the scientific community feel we should be shot."

That, actually, would be a big step up for the beleaguered community of
cold fusioneers.

It has been 14 years since two little-known electrochemists announced,
at an infamous news conference on March 23, 1989, what sounded like the
biggest physics breakthrough since Enrico Fermi produced a nuclear chain
reaction on a squash court in Chicago. Using a tabletop setup, Stanley
Pons and Martin Fleischmann, of the University of Utah, said they had induced
deuterium nuclei to fuse inside metal electrodes, producing measurable
quantities of heat. (Deuterium, a.k.a. heavy hydrogen, has one proton and
one neutron in its nucleus.)

Although nuclear fusion is supposed to be impossible at temperatures much
below those in the sun or a hydrogen bomb, the Utah duo said they had managed
the feat at room temperature.

That was the opening bell for one of the craziest periods in science. Cold
fusion, if real, promised to solve the world's energy problems forever.
(There is enough deuterium in seawater to provide electricity for millennia).
Scientists around the world dropped what they were doing to try to replicate
the astounding claim.

SOME DID, MOST DIDN'T. When a U.S. Department of Energy investigation concluded
in November 1989 that cold fusion was a mirage born of bungled measurements
and wishful thinking, the field became a pariah.

Yet the cold fusioneers persist. In paper after paper last week, scientists
reported that when a metal, usually palladium, absorbs huge amounts of
deuterium into its atomic lattice, the result is more heat than plain old
electrochemistry can explain, as well as particles thought to be by-products
of nuclear fusion.

Some of the most extensive work has been at the Naval Research Laboratory,
whose scientists found both excess heat and a telltale sign of fusion,
particles of helium-4, in dozens of experiments. And Michael McKubre of
SRI International, Menlo Park, Calif., is still, after hundreds of thousands
of experiment-hours and $4 million, getting more heat from his cold-fusion
cells than can be explained conventionally.

Some of the most intriguing research is by physicist Steven Jones of Brigham
Young University, Provo, Utah. Several years before Prof. Pons and Prof.
Fleischmann, he reported low-temperature nuclear fusion, but virtually
no excess heat. That made his cold fusion a big fizzle as an energy source,
but much more acceptable to science.

"The question I get more than any other is, 'Are you still doing this?',
" says Prof. Jones. "The answer is yes, and what we are seeing is very
difficult to explain outside of cold fusion. The repeatability of these
experiments now approaches 80%." Although he still detects no excess heat,
the telltale signs of nuclear fusion "make us conclude that we are seeing
new physics."

Although the persistence of the cold fusioneers makes skeptics shake their
heads, proponents see it differently. "If there were no effects and it
were just experimental error," says Prof. Hagelstein, associate professor
of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, "we would have figured that out by now. I don't think there
is any doubt about the existence of nuclear anomalies. Excess heat might
be real, too."

RIGHT ABOUT HERE, I would cite physicists explaining why Prof. Hagelstein
is wrong. But I can't. Almost no scientist outside the ostracized community
listens to its claims anymore, much less critiques them. It has been years
since a major physics journal published a paper on cold fusion. Prof. Hagelstein
invited some of the original critics to last week's meeting; none showed.

Cold fusion today is a prime example of pathological science, but not because
its adherents are delusional. Yes, it's disconcerting that many of the
experiments inexplicably and unpredictably stop (and start) producing heat.
But the real pathology is the breakdown of the normal channels of scientific
communication, with no scientists outside the tight-knit cold-fusion tribe
bothering to scrutinize its claims.

"If you 'know' that cold fusion is impossible, then you don't have to pay
attention to these results," says Prof. Hagelstein, an award- winning DOE
physicist before being ostracized for his work in the theory of cold fusion.
"The initial criticism was that people needed to do the [heat measurements]
right, but now that some groups have spent millions of dollars doing just
that, the critics still won't read the papers."

I, for one, would love to hear smart physicists explain why the excess
heat from the deuterium-filled palladium reflects not nuclear fusion but
the release of mechanical energy -- sort of like letting go of a stretched
spring. I'd love to see a smart critique of a 2002 paper by Japanese scientists,
published in a Japanese physics journal that few American scientists saw,
describing (shades of medieval alchemists) the transmutation of elements
through cold fusion.

What these claims need is critical scrutiny by skeptics. That's how science
normally functions. But in cold fusion, it isn't. And that's the worst
pathology of all.

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