Purdue attacked over fusion inquiry
By Eugenie Samuel Reich
Nature
December 7, 2006
Nine months after serious allegations were
levelled against high-profile 'bubble fusion'
research at Purdue University in West
Lafayette, Indiana, the institution is being
criticized by researchers within and outside
its walls for its apparent failure to respond.
Lefteri Tsoukalas, head of the nuclear-engineering
school where the work was carried out,
resigned his position in October, expressing
disappointment over the slow pace and secrecy
of the university's response. Last week, he made
his concerns public. In an open letter from
his lawyer to Purdue's provost Sally Mason,
Tsoukalas called for the university to release
an interim report on its progress. "Purdue is a
great public university, not a private club," he
told Nature.
In response, Purdue spokesman Joe Bennett
confirmed for the first time that there is
an ongoing inquiry at the university. "We are
not going to have any comment while this is
under way," he said.
The allegations relate to the work of Rusi
Taleyarkhan, a professor of nuclear engineering
at Purdue. Since 2002, Taleyarkhan has
published three major papers claiming to have
achieved nuclear fusion by using sound waves
to collapse bubbles in deuterated liquids, raising
the prospect of a virtually unlimited energy
source1-3. Tsoukalas' letter comes days after the
announcement that a Texas physicist, working
with Taleyarkhan in his lab, has achieved similar
results (see 'Bubbling up').
In March, Nature reported concerns over
the validity and reliability of Taleyarkhan's
work4, based on statements made by members of Purdue's nuclear-engineering school, as well
as an analysis by physicist Brian Naranjo at the
University of California, Los Angeles. Naranjo's
study5 showed that the spectrum of neutrons
produced by Taleyarkhan's experiments fits
not fusion, but the radioactive decay of californium,
a standard lab material.
Purdue quickly announced that a university
panel would review Taleyarkhan's work
and make the findings public.
In June, it said the review was
complete but that its findings
and any future steps would
remain confidential. Since then,
Purdue has released no information
(until Bennett's comment
this week) about whether or not
it is investigating Taleyarkhan. Tsoukalas says
he decided to write to Purdue because he had
received no adequate response to his concerns
since he first expressed them in March. Purdue's
policies suggest a timeline of three months
for investigating misconduct allegations.
Other researchers in the field are also far from
impressed by the apparent lack of progress. Ken
Suslick, for example, a professor of chemistry at
the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
sent a confidential note in June to Purdue's
associate vice-president for research, Peter
Dunn, stating that he believed Taleyarkhan's
research claims are fraudulent. Suslick detailed
a number of reasons for his view, including
Naranjo's analysis; the fact that other teams
were unable to repeat the work; and an experimental
demonstration he attended at which
he believed data were being "cherry-picked" by Taleyarkhan. Suslick has received no reply
from Purdue.
"They have to be careful what they say in
case the accusations are false, so I'm not horrified
they didn't respond," Suslick says. "But it
is in keeping with their other foot-dragging. At
some point they have to say that they have had
an investigation and that they either exonerated
him or didn't."
Internally, misconduct allegations
have been made that
centre on the claim that Taleyarkhan
wrote up work with
his postdoc Yiban Xu claiming
to have achieved bubble fusion,
then left his own name off the
resulting paper (he is listed in
the acknowledgments)6. Taleyarkhan cited this
study in a later paper3 as independent confirmation
of his work.
Taleyarkhan has indicated that he is unable
to respond to requests for comment about the
various allegations because this might violate
university's confidentiality procedures. But
Taleyarkhan's co-author, Richard Lahey of
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New
York, has defended him. "As far as I have been
told, [the data] were taken by the authors of
this paper," Lahey says.
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Concerns have been raised, however, over
the fact that data published in Xu's paper are
apparently identical to separate data reported
by Taleyarkhan. Xu included a figure showing
microphone measurements taken during a
fusion experiment at Purdue. It includes data
that look identical to those reported by Taleyarkhan from a prior experiment carried out at
Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee7,
where he previously worked, as well as those
presented by him in a slideshow for DARPA,
the Pentagon's research agency, in 2005. The
results from Oak Ridge and Purdue were
reported to have been produced under different
experimental conditions, and the papers
have no common authors. Xu has defended the
measurements as his own, but declined to say
who wrote the paper.
Nature showed the data to three scientists
from different groups in the field. All concluded
that the measurements must have been
taken from the same experiment, because different
acoustic cells tend to have characteristic
outputs. Lahey disagrees. "If the test sections
were of the same design (which they were),
the response during cavitation events will be
essentially the same," he says.
For Tsoukalas, the lack of word from Purdue
is damaging the reputations of all concerned.
In the letter to Mason, Tsoukalas's lawyer,
Philip Michael, writes: "Significant time has
now elapsed since the Purdue Administration
made any public statement on the progress of
its investigation, inquiry or examination of
the allegations of misconduct which Professor
Tsoukalas and other researchers have made.
we believe that it is appropriate to ask for an
interim report."
1. Taleyarkhan, R. P. et al. Science 295, 1868-1873 (2002).
2. Taleyarkhan, R. P. et al. Phys. Rev. E 69, 036109 (2004).
3. Taleyarkhan, R. P. et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 034301 (2006).
4. Reich, E. S. Nature doi:10.1038/news060306-1 (2006).
5. Naranjo, B. Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 149403 (2006).
6. Xu, Y. & Butt, A. Nucl. Eng. Des. 235, 1317-1324 (2005).
7. Taleyarkhan, R. P., Lahey, R. T. & Nigmatulin, R. I. Multiphase
Sci. Technol. 17, 191-224 (2005). |
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Bubbling up
A physicist at a small Texas college says he
has reproduced bubble fusion with the help
of Rusi Taleyarkhan.
The work was presented last month at
the American Nuclear Society's meeting
in Albuquerque, New Mexico, by Edward
Forringer of LeTourneau University - a small,
evangelical Christian school in Longview. The
results were obtained in Taleyarkhan's lab at
Purdue University using his equipment, and
Forringer believes they tentatively confirm
that bubble fusion is occurring.
Forringer went to Taleyarkhan's lab in May
after approaching him about his work. Working
closely with Taleyarkhan, Forringer says he
reproduced Taleyarkhan's earlier results.
Forringer adds he did not see any sign that the
neutrons he detected might have come from
a californium source, as Taleyarkhan's critics
have suggested, rather than fusion. But he
agrees that reproducing the work in a different
lab is what is needed. "We're certainly going to
try to do that," he says.
Geoff Brumfiel | |
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