When Cold Fusion Got Hot, It Rapidly Fizzled : Science: The promise of unlimited energy set off a frenzy of activity. But publicity alone couldn’t make claims of a breakthrough true.
“Cold fusion” was born a year ago today when chemists Martin Fleischmann andB. Stanley Pons at the University of Utah held a press conference to announce that they had tamed the process of nuclear fusion.
Their claim was novel and the apparatus simple--a rod of palladium, a battery and a jar of water. The promise of unlimited energy set off a frenzy of activity and publicity as researchers everywhere rushed to confirm the Utah results.
Scientists would have been ecstatic if cold fusion had been real. But publicity alone didn’t make it true. Confirmation by independent researchers was the only way to be sure. Regrettably, the present consensus is that Pons and Fleischmann were simply wrong. This follows not from prejudice, but from many careful experiments performed and thoroughly documented by interdisciplinary teams using apparatus far more sophisticated than that available to the Utah researchers. The continuing claims of a few “believers” are plagued by irreproducibility, inconsistencies and the absence of peer-reviewed publication. Most telling, however, is that nobody else can make cold fusion work.
The research community responded as it should have. Chemists, physicists and materials scientists dropped work in progress and focused on the fusion claims. Results emerged--with surprising speed--from universities, national laboratories and industry. While it is disappointing that this effort came to naught, validation is an integral part of the scientific process. Any phenomenon that doesn’t fit our understanding of the physical world stimulates a scientist’s curiosity. High-temperature superconductivity is an example where the process had a more favorable outcome.
Cold fusion underscores the interdisciplinary nature of today’s science. The concept intertwines chemistry, materials science, condensed-matter physics and nuclear physics. Complete knowledge of all these fields is simply too much for any one scientist to master. This doesn’t diminish the role of individual initiative and creativity, but today’s science requires cooperation among experts in the various disciplines. Indeed, scientists racing to test the Utah claims immediately formed teams to pool their talents and experience. If Pons and Fleischmann would have done so in their early experiments, cold fusion might have expired quietly.
Instantaneous communication among scientists is now possible through the fax machines and computer networks that link laboratories around the globe. These tools hastened cold fusion research, but the giant game of “telephone” also corrupted information and spread rumors. It accounted for the speed with which the scientific community moved to test the idea, as well as for much of the confusion in the days after the Utah announcement.
Manipulation of the popular media was instrumental in creating and sustaining the furor. Spectacular claims, such as the observation of nuclear reactions, were publicized without sufficient details to allow informed judgment by other scientists. Reports of heat production greatly exaggerated the tiny effects that researchers had actually measured. Reporters who sought independent assessments were hampered by scientists’ natural hesitation to judge the work of others without knowing the details. As the facts became fully known, all of the highly touted claims were withdrawn or severely qualified. The usual procedure of peer review and full publication in a scientific journal is circumvented only at one’s peril.
Pressure for funding distorted the scientific process but couldn’t derail it. The Utah Legislature committed $5 million to a National Cold Fusion Institute on the assurances of a panel made up largely of businessmen, lawyers and publicists. To its credit, the federal government sought better scientific advice. An expert group commissioned by the Department of Energy visited all of the laboratories claiming to have observed cold fusion. Its members didn’t see a single “working” device, even in the lab of Fleischmann and Pons. Qualified peer review remains the best method to allocate our precious and limited research funding.
Modern science is a most exciting endeavor. While progress occurs at an astounding rate, most advances are not widely publicized. Similarly, the errors that do (and must) occur are quietly corrected through the scientific process. True progress withstands the test of time. Although cold fusion excited our imagination, in the end it was just another corrected mistake. Thus, the lessons it teaches are more important than the experiments themselves. We scientists, the media and the curious public would do well to remember them when trumpets herald the next unverified discovery.
