Physicists Debunk Claim Of a New Kind of Fusion
By Malcolm W. Browne
The New York Times
May 3, 1989
BALTIMORE -- Hopes that a new kind of nuclear fusion might give the world an unlimited source of cheap energy appear to have been dealt a devastating blow by scientific evidence presented here.
This so-called devastating evidence was largely from Nathan Lewis (Caltech) and Walter E. Meyerhof (Stanford). Their main point was that Fleischmann and Pons had "erred" by failing to stir the solutions in their cold fusion cells.
Unfortunately, Lewis and Meyerhof neglected to consider that Fleischmann and Pons were world-class electrochemists. Not only did Fleischmann and Pons take heed of the basic requirement to stir the cells in order to ensure a uniform temperature measurement across the cell, but they designed their cell in such a way that the natural geometry of the cell, in conjunction with the bubbling action of the electrolyte, accomplished the task without the need for external stirring devices.
Fleischmann and Pons put Lewis' and Meyerhof's erroneous speculation to rest a week later in Los Angeles at the Electrochemical Society meeting with a videotaped demonstration.
Unfortunately, The New York Times reporter, Sandra Blakeslee, reporting on May 10 from Los Angeles, almost missed the matter of stirring completely. Apparently she did not see or did not understand the signficance of the videotaped evidence that Fleischmann and Pons provided.
Not only did Blakeslee and The New York Times fail to report that Fleischmann and Pons debunked their most vocal critics with the presentation of their videotape, but Blakeslee was incorrect to write, as she did, that there was any remaining "question of whether the Utah team stirred the heavy water before making temperature measurements." |
In two days of meetings lasting until midnight, members of the American Physical Society heard fresh experimental evidence from many researchers that nuclear fusion in a jar of water does not exist.
| Scientists and science journalists would be well-advised to consider carefully any implication that a phenomenon can be proved to not exist. J. A. Labinger of Caltech and S. J. Weininger of Worcester Polytechnic Institute explain the reasons why in their article, "Controversy in Chemistry: How Do You Prove a Negative?" |
Physicists seemed generally persuaded as the sessions ended that assertions of "cold fusion" were based on nothing more than experimental errors by scientists in Utah.
This is a revealing sentence, but perhaps only in hindsight. The scientists holding the negative opinions were physicists. The scientists in Utah were chemists.
The battle lines between the two disciplines had been drawn. Of course the physicists were unconvinced. This has been covered in greater detail in "The Real Cold Fusion Problem."
Browne failed to note that the 7,000 chemists at the Dallas meeting of the American Chemical Society a few weeks earlier were generally enthusiastic about the Utah chemists' claims. |
Furor on Initial Claim
Dr. B. Stanley Pons, professor of chemistry at the University of Utah, and his colleague, Dr. Martin Fleischmann of the University of Southampton in England, touched off a furor by asserting on March 23 in Salt Lake City that they had achieved nuclear fusion in a jar of water at room temperature.
At a news conference today, nine of the leading speakers were asked if they would now rule the Utah claim as dead. Eight said yes, and one, Dr. Johann Rafelski of the University of Arizona, withheld judgment.
| The application of democratic principles, or a popularity contest, to the scientific process raises many more questions than it answers. |
Top physicists directed angry attacks at Dr. Pons and Dr. Fleischmann, calling them incompetent, reciting sarcastic verses about their claims and complaining that they had refused to provide details needed for follow-up experiments. A West European expert said "essentially all" West European attempts to duplicate cold fusion had failed.
Response at Utah University
In a telephone interview, Dr. James Brophy, director of research at the University of Utah, responded, "It is difficult to believe that after five years of experiments Dr. Pons and Dr. Fleischmann could have made some of the errors I've heard have been alleged at the American Physical Society meeting."
The criticism at the regular spring meeting of the society came just before Dr. Pons was scheduled to meet with representatives of President Bush and just after the University of Utah asked Congress to provide $25 million to pursue Dr. Pons's research. A university spokesman said Dr. Pons was in Washington and could not be reached to answer questions.
Cold fusion, Dr. Pons and Dr. Fleischmann said, can be initiated in a cell containing heavy water, in whose molecules the heavy form of hydrogen called deuterium is substituted for ordinary hydrogen. When current is passed through the heavy water from a palladium cathode, the Utah team said, the palladium absorbs deuterium atoms, which are forced to fuse, generating heat and neutrons.
Fusion, which powers the sun and hydrogen bombs, normally occurs only at extremely high temperatures. If a means could be found to harness a form of hydrogen fusion as a commercial source of power, some scientists have said, energy shortages could be forestalled.
Some of the new experiments also sought to reproduce the less contentious findings on cold fusion reported independently by Dr. Steven E. Jones and his colleagues at Brigham Young University in Utah. Dr. Jones, who used a device similar to the one in the Pons-Fleischmann experiment, did not claim that any useful energy was produced. But he did report that slightly more neutrons were detected while the cell was operating than could be expected from normal sources. The result suggests at least the possibility of fusion, he said, although it is not likely to be useful as an energy source.
| These cautious statements by Steven Jones are telltale signs that the Pons-Fleischmann announcement was a threat to conventional fusion energy research. Jones' vacillations on the prospects for generating energy from his muon-catalyzed fusion are covered in detail in "The Real Cold Fusion Problem." |
Physicists who have investigated Dr. Jones's report have been fairly restrained in their criticism, acknowledging that Dr. Jones is a careful scientist. But from the outset they have expressed profound skepticism of claims by Dr. Fleischmann and Dr. Pons.
Attempts to Repeat Experiments
Since March, scores of laboratories in the United States and abroad have sought to repeat the cold fusion experiments, and some completed their investigations just hours before the meeting was convened here Monday.
The most thoroughgoing of the attempts to validate the Pons-Fleischmann experiment was conducted at the California Institute of Technology. According to Dr. Nathan Lewis, leader of the Caltech team, every possible variant of the Pons-Fleischmann experiment was tried without success.
Lewis could not possibly have tried every possible variant in the 39 days leading up to the Baltimore conference. Even now, 17 years later, it can be said with certainty that nobody has tried every possible variant. |
Using equipment far more sensitive than any available to the Utah group, Caltech failed to find any symptoms of fusion. The scientists found no emitted neutrons, gamma rays, tritium or helium, although the Utah group reported all these emissions at high levels. And all the cells consumed energy rather than produced it, the Caltech team said.
| Caltech may have had better equipment in general. But it is unlikely that they had better calorimetry than Fleischmann and Pons. Calorimetry was the most important tool to detect the cold fusion effect.
Among other factors, Lewis did not use a hard vacuum in his double-walled flask, and consequently his detection limit would have been less precise than Fleischmann and Pons'.
Lewis has refused to speak to New Energy Times on this history and he also has refused to cooperate with Navy auditors who visited him at Caltech.
See the story "Reasonable Doubt" for more details. |
The Caltech team intentionally reproduced experimental errors leading to the same erroneous conclusions reached by the Utah group, Dr. Lewis said. By failing to install a stirring device in the test cell, temperature differences in the cell led to false estimates of its overall heat, he said. This may have suggested to the Utah group that its cell was producing fusion energy.
Presence of Helium in Test
Noting that Dr. Pons and Dr. Fleischmann had also reported the presence of helium, a fusion product, in the test cell, Dr. Lewis said his group had also found helium. But helium is a trace component of air, and the amount of helium in the cell corresponded to what normally enters from the atmosphere.
"Pons would never answer any of our questions," Dr. Lewis told an audience of 1,800 physicists, "so we asked Los Alamos National Laboratory to put our questions to him instead, since they were in touch with him."
This statement appears to be not entirely accurate. Several years later Gary Taubes
chronicled
in Bad Science (page 123) an e-mail and phone conversation between Lewis and Pons the day after the March 23, 1989 press conference:
"Hi Stan, I am sure that you have been inundated with requests, but we have an extremely sensitive neutron counter and can confirm the reaction, however our initial attempts did not yield any neutrons."
Pons was apparently reluctant to accept Lewis' "help."
"
We don't think there's many neutrons," Pons said. "This is a nonclassical nuclear reaction."
Additionally, Martin Fleischmann reported to New Energy Times on Oct. 23, 2003 that “Stan phoned me in the U.K. to say that he had incessant calls from the Caltech group who would not take any notice of what he said.” These facts indicate that Pons did answer some questions, but not to the satisfaction of Lewis. |
Other scientists said they had tried every possible variation of the Utah experiments.
Dr. Edward F. Redish of the University of Maryland, chairman of the meeting, said that 10 days ago he telephoned Dr. Fleischmann to invite him to participate in the Baltimore sessions and answer criticism.
"He told me that Dr. Pons would try to come," Dr. Redish said. "But just before the meeting Dr. Pons let us know that he would be too busy discussing cold fusion with a Congressional committee to come to Baltimore."
A spokesman for the University of Utah said Dr. Pons was preparing to meet with members of Bush's staff Wednesday.
| The meeting never happened.
It was cancelled by White House staff, apparently within hours after this story published.
(Source: Anon w/ U.S. Military 3/27/2006) |
Failure to Elicit Information
Many speakers at the meeting reported failure in their efforts to elicit information or comments from Dr. Pons. Dr. J. K. Dickens of Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee said that to duplicate the cell used by the Utah group, his laboratory had been forced to estimate its size.
It is true that Fleischmann, Pons and the University of Utah misled the public and the scientific community to think that they intended to share this scientific discovery with the world. They did not. The purpose of the press conference was to secure intellectual primacy and intellectual property of the discovery. It was primarily in response to the fight and the failed collaboration with Steven Jones.
Can Fleischmann and Pons be faulted for making the
announcement
and then telling the world's scientists to wait several weeks until the paper came out before trying to replicate it? Yes.
On the other hand, were Dickens, Lewis and the others who rushed to replicate truly "forced" to
immediately
attempt a replication rather than wait a few weeks until the Fleischmann-Pons paper published? Dickens and Lewis have declined to comment to New Energy Times. |
"One published photograph of the Utah cell showed Pons's hand, and that gave us the scale," he said. Dr. Lewis said his group had also used the photograph showing Dr. Pons's hand as a measure of the cell's size. But Oak Ridge Laboratory, like Caltech, failed to find any evidence of cold fusion after it had built and tested the cell.
Unfortunately, the cell used for the photo was a prop, requested by photographers because the real cell was much smaller.
Martin Fleischmann: "Fortune magazine said that the [cells] we had used were not photogenic and they wanted to photograph a really big cell. Thus is born a really big confusion. The group at Caltech used this photograph to scale their apparatus and the use of small electrodes in such cells would have led to miserable and inexplicable results.”
(Source: Private communications, 10/23/2003) |
Physicists asked Dr. Lewis if he could account for the burst of heat that Dr. Pons reported as having destroyed one of the Utah cells.
"My understanding," Dr. Lewis said, "is that Pons's son was there at the time, not Pons himself. I understand that someone turned the current off for a while. When that happens hydrogen naturally bubbles out of the palladium cathode, and creates a hazard of fire or explosion. It is a simple chemical reaction that has nothing to do with fusion."
Lewis was under a misapprehension on all three points.
All the books that have investigated the 1985 laboratory accident which melted a hole through the lab bench top and into the concrete floor state that Joseph Pons arrived in the morning, after the explosion happened in the middle of the night.
Joseph Pons also is reported to have turned the current up, from 0.75 amperes to 1.5 amperes, not off, which is consistent with known triggering methods for these reactions.
Lewis' assertion of the "simple chemical reaction" has been examined by electrochemists Michael McKubre of SRI International and Edmund Storms, retired from Los Alamos National Laboratory, and found to be inconsistent with the science and the facts. |
Other Reports of Failures
Among other major research groups that gave details today of experiments failing to validate the Pons-Fleischmann results were representatives of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in California and the University of Rochester. Before the meeting, a joint research group of Brookhaven National Laboratory and Yale University also reported failure to find evidence of the existence of cold fusion.
Dr. Douglas R. O. Morrison, a physicist representing CERN, the European scientific consortium for nuclear research, reported that "essentially all" West European attempts to duplicate the Pons-Fleischmann experiment had failed. The entire episode, he said, was an example of "pathological science," in which an erroneous experiment initially gained some support, then prompted skepticism and finally led to denunciation.
Morrison led the charge of pathological science against cold fusion, providing his authoritative perspective in regular reports to the world's science community. "Very quickly I realized that cold fusion was going to be the world's best example of pathological science." |
Most of the initial support has eroded. The Georgia Institute of Technology withdrew an early report that it had partly confirmed the Pons-Fleischmann experiment.
At Stanford University, Prof. Robert A. Huggins repeated the Pons-Fleischmann experiment several weeks ago, and obtained results that seemed to suggest fusion. But Dr. Walter E. Meyerhof, professor of physics at Stanford, told scientists Monday night that he had carefully studied his colleague's apparatus and found that the experiment was flawed because of the system used to measure heat. Nevertheless, Dr. Huggins, a materials scientist, said in a telephone interview that he is "more confident than ever" in his results.
New Energy Times' investigations have shown these allegations by Meyerhof to be incorrect. Please see "The Real Cold Fusion Problem" for further details.
Huggins' qualifications: Founder and director of Stanford’s Center for Materials Research, Sc.D. in metallurgy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, director of the U.S. Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency materials science program from 1968 to 1970. |
While most critics of the Utah work limited themselves to discussion of experimental results, some directed their ire at Dr. Pons and Dr. Fleischmann themselves.
"Incompetence and Delusion"
Dr. Steven E. Koonin of Caltech called the Utah report a result of "the incompetence and delusion of Pons and Fleischmann." The audience of scientists sat in stunned silence for a moment before bursting into applause.
| Charles Beaudette's book (Excess Heat & Why Cold Fusion Research Prevailed) shows that Koonin's attack was premeditated and intended to "hit hard." In 2006, New Energy Times discussed this with Koonin, now the chief scientist of British Petroleum. Koonin expressed no regret or remorse about his vicious character defamation of Fleischmann and Pons. Koonin's attack marked the discoverers - and anyone who would dare follow in their footsteps - as untouchables in the world of science. |
Referring to a possible error in temperature measurements by the Utah group, Dr. Walter E. Meyerhof of Stanford University offered this contribution:
Tens of millions of dollars at stake, Dear Brother, Because some scientist put a thermometer At one place and not another.
Dr. Brophy of the University of Utah said the Utah team, like all other scientific groups, welcomed criticism by other scientists.
"Any scientist can be proved to be slightly in error or greatly in error," he said. "If Dr. Pons and Dr. Fleischmann have made errors they will acknowledge them. But so far none of their critics have published their criticisms, and they are conducting science by press conference, as we have been accused of doing."
Dr. Brophy said his group was not disturbed by the vote by eight of nine physicists calling the Utah experiment dead. "Pons and Fleischmann will be speaking themselves next Monday at a meeting of the Electrochemical Society in Los Angeles, and the vote there would be likely to be different," he said.
Dr. Jones himself spoke at the meeting, and although participants questioned him sharply about his experiment, questioning was generally friendly.
He drew cheers and laughter when he concluded his talk by saying, "Is this a shortcut to fusion energy? Read my lips: No!" He defended his own experiment, describing his results as a "fragile flower" that would never grow into a "tree" producing useful energy, but could nevertheless "beautify" science.
Some critics, however, continued to insist that Dr. Jones's results also stem from experimental error rather than fusion.
Dr. Dickens of Oak Ridge noted that Dr. Jones had used relatively crude neutron-detecting equipment, and had measured only a very small excess of neutrons over what could be expected from natural sources without any fusion.
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