Joe Zaman
May 3, 2004
NE 24

What is “fusion”?
Fusion is a nuclear reaction in which light nuclei (e.g., deuterium, tritium) combine to form more massive nuclei with the simultaneous release of energy and radiation.

Experiments performed by Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann
Pons was a chemist and the chairman of chemistry department of the Univ.of Utah. Fleischmann was (is) an electrochemist from the University of Southampton, England who collaborated and mentored Pons. They claimed to have been working on cold nuclear fusion for 5 years before 1989 -- in their basement laboratory, which Pons later describes as containing college freshmen-level equipment. (The cold fusion “reactor” was mounted on a dishpan.). The experiment consisted of suspending a solid, one-cubic-centimeter palladium electrode from a palladium wire in a large beaker. The beaker was filled with a cocktail of heavy water and lithium. They charged (electrolyzed) the water in this contraption by passing a current between the palladium electrode and a second electrode made of platinum. [1] Why did they expect this to work? Simply because they thought the electric charge through the electrolytic cell would suffice for deuterium nuclei to amass inside the palladium electrode – since palladium metal has the ability to absorb hydrogen, which was present in the heavy water (with deuterium nuclei) inside the beaker. Pons claimed that after the apparatus had electricity running through it overnight, the palladium had melted and left a big hole through the beaker, the table underneath, and the ground underneath.
They claimed that the heat released in this process exceeded the energy supplied in the electrolysis. Where did the extra energy come from? Pons and Fleischmann opined that deuterium atoms in the metal were pushed so close together that they were able to “fuse” in a nuclear reaction.

How the word spread
In Sept. 1987, Pons and Fleischmann inform the public of their work on cold fusion.
In early 1989, they inform the president of Univ. of Utah, Chase Peterson, that they had successfully implemented fusion reaction in a system at room temperature (hence the name “cold”). On Mar. 22, 1989, the News Director at the Univ. of Utah, Pam Fogle, begins informing her media contacts about the finding. She notifies a science reporter of The Wall Street Journal. On Mar. 23, 1989, a press conference was held at the University. Along with Pons, Fleischmann, and Peterson, at the front table were seated the vice president for research at the university and a physicist, Jim Brophy, and by a dean in the Faculty of Science at the Univ. of Southampton (England), Robert Nesbitt. Peterson referred to the experiment as an “international cooperation in scientific exploration.” Brophy claimed that the two had reproduced their experimental results many times. On Mar 24, 1989, news of the “successful” cold nuclear fusion reaction appears on the front-page of newspapers around the world.

Inconsistencies regarding the experiment
Several questions (and inconsistencies) regarding the experiment were brought up during and after the press conference. An incident such as a hole being put through the floor of a chemistry building should have prompted an investigation – but none was conducted. Fusion generally releases huge amounts of radiation, but Pons claimed that very little of it was released. As with all faulty scientific experiments, their cold fusion experimental results could not be reproduced by others. Pons and Fleischmann provided very little technical data from their experiment, and they had no proof of their 5 year research on cold fusion. Nuclear fusion releases a large amounts of radiation, but Pons claimed that the experiment released very little of it (which contradicts his earlier claims of no radiation release at all).

The pseudoscience of cold fusion
It took only a handful of people to convince the general public worldwide into believing that a limitless, clean energy source was just around the corner. A combination of foolishness, greed, and carelessness played a role in creating one of the biggest scientific blunders of the century. At the top of the list of these people are B. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, whose claim of accomplishing a successful cold nuclear fusion experiment set the scientific community and pretty much the rest of the world wondering about what the future would bring.

Gary Taubes, the author of Bad Science: The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion [1], describe Pons as the “experimentalist”, while Fleischmann was the “theorist.” They made a complementary couple in that neither one was very good at alleviating the other’s shortcomings, explains Taubes. Fleischmann developed wrong ideas more frequently than he did correct ones, but Pons was not the careful and questioning type. Fleischmann was “dominant” and more experienced, whereas Pons was the “aggressive and fast” one. They did not represent the model scientific “checks-and-balances” couple. Both scientists, however, had built solid reputations. Pons was a very prolific professor – at the height of his career, he wrote a paper approximately every ten days; with Fleischmann, they wrote more than thirty scientific papers. Fleischmann was a distinguished electrochemist in much of Europe, winning several prizes in the field, among them was Fellow in the Royal Society.

Because of the scientific reputations they had made for themselves, the public, especially Chase Peterson, came to believe in their cold fusion claim. Other reasons for such wide acceptance of their claim include the “support” provided by Jim Brophy and Pam Fogle, who bypassed her restrictions and leaked the news of cold fusion to the The Wall Street Journal. The journal, in turn, made the story public prematurely, further crediting the two. Furthermore, several of the scientific papers that Pons and Fleischmann wrote prior to 1989 (not directly related to cold fusion) contained severe errors. Greed was also a factor in this whole ordeal. They realized the implications (and value) of cold fusion and shared their project with a select few from the university and the outside world. Before Pons and Fleischmann went public with their news, they had the option of having their work reviewed by Steven Jones, a physicist from Brigham Young University – but the two declined for fear that Jones might steal their idea, knowing that he had independently come across the concept of cold fusion. Pons tended to withhold details of his experiments from the scientific community. There was no exception with his cold fusion project.

Not all scientists think that cold fusion is a pipe dream. The author of Fire from Ice: Searching for the Truth Behind the Cold Fusion Furor (1991), Eugene Mallove argues that cold fusion is plausible, but that the media is not doing justice to the research field. He places most of the blame on scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Researchers around world continue to spend millions of dollars in the study cold fusion.

References:

[1] Taubes, Gary. Bad Science: The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion. 1993.
Published by Random House, Inc., New York.
[2] Eugene F. Mallove. “MIT and Cold Fusion: A Special Report.” Infinite Energy.
Issue 24, 1999.
[3] All Referer.com Reference and Encyclopedia Resource. <allreferer.com>
[4] Platt, Charles. “What if Cold Fusion is Real?” Wired Magazine. Issue 6.11, Nov 1998.