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Purdue finishes probe of embattled scientist
Associated Press

Saturday, April 26, 2008

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - A Purdue University panel that investigated research misconduct allegations against a nuclear scientist who claims he produced nuclear fusion in a simple lab experiment has turned over its findings to federal authorities.

Purdue spokeswoman Jeanne Norberg said Friday that Purdue's report on Rusi Taleyarkhan was sent April 18 to the inspector-general of the Office of Naval Research in Arlington, Va.

She said the school "will have no comment until ONR responds" to the school's findings.

The recently completed inquiry is Purdue's latest in a series of reviews of allegations against Taleyarkhan, a professor of nuclear engineering whose "bubble fusion" claims have been dogged for years by allegations of research misconduct and possible fraud.

Purdue's report comes a year after a congressional subcommittee chided the school for "numerous failures" in its handling of an earlier probe that cleared Taleyarkhan of allegations that he interfered with efforts to verify his bubble fusion claims.

The Office of Naval Research, which funded some of Taleyarkhan's research, said in a statement Friday that Purdue's investigative report would "undergo a thorough review," but declined further comment.

"Additional information will not be available until the investigative process concludes with a final disposition and any or all appeals are exhausted," said ONR spokesman Peter Vietti.

Taleyarkhan's attorney, John H. Lewis of the Indianapolis law firm Lewis & Wilkins, said Friday that he and Taleyarkhan were preparing a response to Purdue's report and that it would be forwarded to the ONR.

He said Taleyarkhan intends to challenge the report's "accuracy, adequacy and completeness."

"The issue in my opinion is that first Purdue looked at the professor and then Congress looked at Purdue. Now everybody's sort of under the microscope," he said.

Taleyarkhan published research in the journal Science in 2002 claiming he had produced fusion - the force that powers stars - using a tabletop experiment that involved collapsing bubbles in a solvent with powerful ultrasound vibrations.

That simple tabletop experiment stood in contrast to nuclear fusion research that has to date required large, multibillion-dollar machines in the quest to unleash what could be an unlimited energy source.

But Taleyarkhan's work has been controversial from the outset.

In the same issue of Science that his 2002 paper appeared in, two researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee - where Taleyarkhan then worked - published dissenting research saying that his bubble fusion work was inaccurate.

Since then, Taleyarkhan, who joined Purdue's faculty in late 2003, has faced growing questions about his research, including allegations of fraud in his experiments. Other scientists have tried without success to independently reproduce his fusion work.

Taleyarkhan, however, contends that other scientists have in fact replicated his work and accuses his critics of conflict of interest, jealousy and other motives.

Last month, he filed a defamation lawsuit in Tippecanoe County accusing two Purdue professors of trying to "destroy" him "and his reputation" in part through comments they made to the British journal Nature about his research.

In a March 2006 issue of Nature, they were quoted saying Taleyarkhan had tried to thwart their efforts to test his bubble fusion claims, and that their confidence in his work had been seriously shaken.

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