Concerns grow over secrecy
of bubble-fusion inquiry
By Eugenie Samuel Reich
Nature
July 20 , 2006
As a way to resolve a scientific dispute, it was
always likely to be fraught. In March 2005,
nuclear engineer Rusi Taleyarkhan of Purdue
University in West Lafayette, Indiana -
known for his controversial claims to have
achieved 'bubble fusion' - formally joined
forces with one of his most prominent critics,
physicist Seth Putterman of the University of
California, Los Angeles.
But few could have predicted that this collaboration
would end in such disarray. After concerns
about Taleyarkhan's work were reported
in Nature earlier this year1, Purdue carried out
an inquiry, but has shrouded the results in confidentiality,
a decision that has frustrated other
researchers in the field. The findings could
resolve the long-standing controversy surrounding
bubble fusion, but whether they will
ever be made public now seems to rest on a
technicality: did $250,000 of US taxpayers'
money help fund the disputed work?
The story began in 2002, when Taleyarkhan
reported fusion in collapsing bubbles within a
liquid, an effect also called sonofusion2. His
work made headlines worldwide: if the effect
could be harnessed, it would promise almost
unlimited energy. But others in the field were
not convinced.
In the hope of settling the resulting argument,
in March 2005 DARPA, the Pentagon's
research agency, paid Taleyarkhan and his critics to work together to replicate the bubblefusion
experiment. Putterman was principal
investigator on the $812,000 grant and so has
to account for all the expenditure. Taleyarkhan
was allocated $318,000 of the grant, and Ken
Suslick of the University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign was given $145,000.
It was clear things weren't going well when
concerns about the validity of Taleyarkhan's
bubble-fusion work were reported on 8 March1.
These included an analysis by Putterman's postdoc,
Brian Naranjo3, showing that the neutrons
described in Taleyarkhan's latest paper, published
in Physical Review Letters (PRL) in January4,
came not from fusion as claimed but from
the radioactive decay of standard lab material.
Purdue's provost Sally Mason called the
reports "very serious" and announced a threemonth
review, the outcome of which she
promised to publish. But once the review was
complete, Purdue said the results and any future
steps would be kept internal and confidential.
On completion of a review, Purdue's stated policy
is either to close the matter or to proceed to
a fully fledged misconduct investigation. The
university won't say which has occurred.
Many in the field are disappointed by the
lack of information, including Putterman. He
is sure that money from the shared DARPA
grant was used for the work Purdue reviewed,
so he is particularly keen to know whether an investigation is under way. "As a principal
investigator, do I have any right to know what's
happening on my project?"
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In cases where federal money is involved,
there is a responsibility to tell the government
and the taxpayer how it was spent - and any
misuse of federal dollars can have serious
consequences for the researchers involved. If
DARPA money was used for any of the disputed
work, Purdue would be required to
notify the agency of any investigation, and
share information relating to it. Such communications
could eventually be made public
under the US Freedom of Information Act.
Taleyarkhan did not
acknowledge the DARPA grant
in the January PRL paper. But
when Nature asked Putterman
to confirm no DARPA money
was used, he requested the relevant
accounts from Purdue.
Putterman now says: "I've
reviewed the books, and I am confident that
the paper relied on federal money that was not
acknowledged." For example, Taleyarkhan and
his colleagues claimed DARPA salaries in the
run up to submission of the PRL paper (see
'Where did the money go?').
Taleyarkhan has declined to communicate
with Nature directly. But he said through a
third party - Brian Josephson at the University
of Cambridge, UK - that Putterman's
interpretation of how the work was funded is
"off-base and wrong". Josephson also provided
part of an e-mail in which Taleyarkhan
strongly denies using the DARPA grant on the
disputed work. Taleyarkhan says the experiments
were completed by May 2005, several
months before the paper was submitted, and
that start-up funding from Purdue paid for
them. (The university told Nature that this
funding totalled $58,607.) He adds that he and
the others involved worked on the project outside
the normal eight-hour day.
In the e-mail, Taleyarkhan also says that the
bubble fusion described in the PRL paper is
different from that reported in his previous
papers, on which he has warmly acknowledged
DARPA funding. He does not give
details of what the $251,044 of DARPA money
he spent was used for, if not the disputed work.
Taleyarkhan's explanation may make little
difference if the case is investigated.
"If any part of salary is
allocated to a grant awarded by
a federal agency, then federal
funding is involved," says Mark
Frankel, director of the Scientific
Freedom, Responsibility
and Law programme at the
American Association for the Advancement of
Science in Washington DC. Nature has confirmed
this general interpretation with an
investigator at a federal funding agency.
Purdue says it has not queried Taleyarkhan's
assertion that no federal money was used. "The
authors of the paper are the best source of
information on the source of support for
research," says a spokesman. "We have no reason
to question the source of support stated."
1. Reich, E. S. Nature doi:10.1038/news060306-1 (2006).
2. Taleyarkhan, R. P. et al. Science 295, 1868-1873 (2002).
3. Naranjo, B. preprint at www.arxiv.org/abs/physics/
0603060 (2006).
4. Taleyarkhan, R. P. et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 034301 (2006). |
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Where Did the Money Go?
The DARPA grant awarded to Seth Putterman and Rusi Taleyarkhan for work on bubble fusion
began in March 2005, and Taleyarkhan submitted a paper to Physical Review Letters (PRL) that
September4. Taleyarkhan insists no DARPA money was used for that work, but after checking
accounts at Purdue University, where Taleyarkhan is based, Putterman believes otherwise.
• According to Purdue's
accounts, the DARPA grant
was billed for one-third of
Taleyarkhan's salary from
March until May 2005, all
of it from June to August, and
one-fifth of it from September
to December.
• At least $25,000 of the grant
money was transferred to
Taleyarkhan's former
collaborator JaeSeon Cho at
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
in Tennessee. The PRL paper
thanks Cho for his "in-depth
advice and ongoing technical
assistance and cross-checks".
• Taleyarkhan's postdoc,
Yiban Xu, was a co-author on
the PRL paper. The DARPA
grant paid all of his salary for
March and April 2005, and at
least half of it from May until
December. (Xu's salary was
originally billed at 100% for
part of this latter period, but a
partial refund was made in
March 2006.)
• The experiment described
in the PRL paper is the same
as the one Taleyarkhan
demonstrated to his DARPA
programme manager, William
Coblenz, at a meeting on
1 March 2006 to assess
progress of the DARPAfunded
work.
• None of Taleyarkhan's other
grants, according to a list
provided by Purdue University,
includes the word 'sonofusion'
in the title.
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