Understanding the Initial Reaction to the Cold Fusion Discovery

by Steven B. Krivit

Shortly after its chaotic introduction on March 23, 1989, the story of cold fusion was quickly interpreted and disseminated by the machinery of the world's popular media, which told us it had all been a mistake, a fraud, the result of wishful thinking.

The key claim of electrochemists Dr. Martin Fleischmann and Dr. Stanley Pons, working in 1989 at the University of Utah, was that they had discovered a novel, unexplained source of energy in the form of heat. This claim was published in the scientific literature within two years, and numerous published replications followed in the subsequent five years.

At the time, a few highly vocal scientists set in place the erroneous belief that this new field was "theoretically impossible" and, in fact, not even scientific. Their opinions were given as fact, their conviction was absolute, and their prominence as science authorities reinforced the initial acceptance of their points of view.

John Huizenga, Professor Emeritus of chemistry and physics at the University of Rochester and chair of the1989 Department of Energy cold fusion review panel, made clear the three reasons why the prevailing fusion theory precluded the likelihood that the Fleischmann-Pons claim was of any merit.

In a spirit of disbelief and cynicism, he referred to these contradictions as "miracles." He implied that the idea of cold fusion was false because Fleischmann and Pons' experimental claims lacked 1) strong neutron emissions, 2) an explanation of how the Coulomb barrier is penetrated and 3) an explanation for why no strong emission of gamma rays or x-rays occurs.

In the scientific literature, no evidence has been formally presented that demonstrates an error of protocol, experimental or analytical, which refutes Fleischmann and Pons' most significant claim from their 1990 paper: massive amounts of energy from an unexplained source. This finding is commonly referred to as excess heat.

Their assertion of significant neutron flux via gamma ray detection is a separate matter that was summarily and properly discredited by their critics.

Their claim of a sustained deuterium-deuterium fusion reaction was speculative and bold, perhaps unscientific, and perhaps to blame for the suspicions directed their way from the broader scientific community.

The discrepancies between the existing theory and the new experimental work led many scientists to conclude that the theory was correct and the experiments were incorrect.

"According to our theoretical understanding of fusion," wrote Mark Mac Low, an astrophysicist with the American Museum of Natural History, "release of excess heat should be accompanied by release of well-determined quantities of energetic particles including fast neutrons and gamma rays. None of the experiments reported to release excess heat have also released energetic particles in the quantities predicted. In the absence of a convincing theoretical argument why the purported fusion reactions should not behave like all others that we have measured, the clear conclusion is that something else, most likely measurement error or poor experimental design, yields the reported results."

Many physicists, like Mac Low, favored the prevailing theory over the experimental claims. However, the validity of the claim of excess heat, which was independent of Fleischmann and Pons' other claims, has sustained.

It will come as a surprise to many people that this claim of a new source of energy was formally published in the scientific literature and also that it was never disproved.

Two events in particular are largely responsible for the prevailing public perception (as of 2006) of why scientists have dismissed the claims of Fleischmann and Pons. The first was MIT's allegation of fraud in the Boston Herald ("MIT Bombshell Knocks Fusion 'Breakthrough' Cold," May 1, 1989 and the second was Caltech scientists Nathan Lewis' and Steven Koonin's devastating presentation at the Baltimore American Physical Society meeting on May 1 and 2, 1989 [For more details, see The Real Cold Fusion Problem and The News Heard 'Round the World].

Despite the air of authority of scientists from such prominent institutions as MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Yale and others, their presentations at the American Physical Society meeting were not peer-reviewed or part of the published scientific literature; APS does not typically peer-review or publish papers as a consequence of these meetings.

Consequently, the widely reported dismissals and rejections at the APS meeting and in the popular press were outside of the "rules" of science and bypassed what might have been more thoughtful vetting.

The Boston Herald story was arranged by scientists from MIT prior to any related scientific publication and prior to the Baltimore press conference. It was scheduled for release, at their request, the day of the Baltimore conference. An extensive report on this set of circumstances is in Eugene Mallove's MIT Special Report. [The mp3 audio recording of the MIT scientists' interview with the Herald is available in two parts: PartA (10MB,) and PartB (5MB.)

After the Baltimore meeting, the media, by and large, paid no attention to the subject of cold fusion and failed to report any further developments on the subject, with the exception of the Department of Energy's 1989 review (see sidebar).

Most of the media failed to report Fleischmann and Pons' successful rebuttal at the May 8, 1989 meeting of the Electrochemical Society of America in Los Angeles.

As science progresses, each published paper effectively marks another step along the path of knowledge and understanding of the natural universe. When a published paper is found to be faulty, the science community states the specific error of protocol of the paper and amends the scientific record accordingly.

In the case of Fleischmann and Pons, their July 1990 claim of excess heat has stood unrefuted for 12 years. This author knows of no published, substantive critiques that have not been rebutted by Fleischmann and Pons.

How Strong or Weak were Fleischmann and Pons' claims?

Did Fleischmann and Pons have publishable data to support the claims of a nuclear reaction in 1989? Not according to the nuclear experts of the day. Did they have the normal, expected evidence of nuclear fusion to back up their claim? Absolutely not.

Did they, however, have cause to hypothesize that some kind of a nuclear reaction might have been responsible for their observations? Absolutely. Consider their perspective, as they wrote in their July 1990 paper:

"It is our view that there can be little doubt that one must invoke nuclear processes to account for the magnitudes of the enthalpy releases, although the nature of these processes is an open question at this stage."

Some observers consider the invocation by Fleischmann and Pons of a nuclear process to have been reckless and arrogant, that they should have been far more conservative. A more cautious approach most likely would have been to their benefit.

Though some outspoken nuclear physicists summarily dismissed the credentials and expertise of Fleischmann and Pons, they did know their chemistry -- cold. Skeptical nuclear physicists were distracted by the very surprising magnitude and astounding paradoxes of the claims; many of them consequently assumed that all the related facts were flawed.

"The total specific energy ... is 10² - 10³ times larger than the enthalpy of reaction of chemical processes," Fleischmann and Pons wrote in their 1990 paper. In plain English, they observed heat coming from their experiment that was 1,000 times larger than any known possible chemical reaction.

Had they never mentioned anything about nuclear science and merely reported observations of excess heat, this controversy might never have transpired.

Several years later, Richard Garwin, a prominent physicist with IBM, audited an independent cold fusion experiment at SRI International. These researchers used a different method and confirmed an effect of the same order of magnitude. Garwin's report states:

The Unwritten Rules Can Be Inconsistent  

According to the normal rules of science, two experiments, an original and a replication, performed rigorously, are the minimum requirements to establish a novel claim.

Sometimes, however, acceptance comes without an independent replication. For example, on April 27, 2005, Seth Putterman's tabletop pyroelectric crystal fusion experiment at UCLA was published by Nature and was accepted by physics authorities such as Will Happer from Princeton University, who thought it was "very persuasive" just one day later.

The first replication of Putterman's work didn't publish until 10 months later, on Feb. 10, 2006, when Jeff Geuther and Yaron Danon of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute presented their research in Physical Review Letters.

The original Fleischmann and Pons July 1990 paper in the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry reported 19 runs with positive excess enthalpy averaging 586 milliwatts. Fourteen control runs showed negative enthalpy averaging -1.3 milliwatts. Their detection limit was 1 milliwatt. This is a signal-to-noise ratio, or signal over background, of 450 to 1. (As for the slight negative readings, Fleischmann and Pons provided an explanation in the paper.)

They reported 40 test cells in total, and 19 demonstrated excess heat. The mystery of why some cells work and others don't has been the Achilles' heel of cold fusion research for some time. Many funders and skeptics have been reluctant to bet on cold fusion research without at least a complete, absolute understanding of the experimental mechanics, if not a working theory as well.

In mid-October 1989, Fleischmann and Pons reported another set of results in Washington, D.C., at the NSF/EPRI meeting. Twenty-three of 28 cells generated anomalous power greater than 20 milliwatts.

The first replication of the Fleischmann and Pons claim of excess heat was published in December 1990 by University of Minnesota professor emeritus Richard Oriani in Fusion Technology.

A Communication Breakdown

The cold fusion episode often has been regarded as the scientific fiasco of the 20th century -- a set of claims alleged to be entirely in error. The true fiasco of cold fusion, however, was a breakdown and exposure of a weakness in the scientific process.

A major aspect of this breakdown is the collapse in the distinction between authoritative and nonauthoritative publishing. Fleischmann, Pons and the University of Utah may have been the first to use the conventional media to convey their science messages to the public, but they were certainly not the only ones.

Lewis' angry comment on May 1, 1989 characterized the nature of this breakdown: "If we're going to have publication with press conferences, we should have peer reviews as press conferences, too." And he proceeded to do just that.

The public, unfortunately, was misled to think that such behavior was appropriate. The press, having had no prior experience with such scientific chaos, jumped in into the fray, not realizing that they were throwing gasoline onto a fire and acting as messengers in intercollegiate crossfire.

The unwritten rules of science dictate that scientific claims and counterclaims are to be vetted in scientific journals, peer-reviewed venues guided by and overseen by science professionals. This is not what happened while the subject matter was in the public spotlight in early 1989.

Even the papers presented at the Baltimore American Physical Society meeting -- for all the attention given to them by the popular media -- were never peer-reviewed or vetted in authoritative scientific literature.

Hindsight is 20/20

In 2006, we understand much more clearly the conditions required to generate excess heat, and a few researchers claim to have little difficulty in achieving high repeatability. Early on, however, skeptics alleged that this limitation of low repeatability and low reproducibility was the telltale sign of false science and consequently, they implied, the entire field likely was the result of self-delusion, random errors or fraud.

Does the limitation of not being able to generate the excess heat effect on demand provide sufficient explanation for its being considered unscientific?

History is not without examples of science and technology challenges that were difficult to reproduce, including the early semiconductor research, mammalian cloning experiments and the verification of the "top quark."

Consequently, reproducibility does not seem to be a universal standard for dismissal of new science.

Is Science Always Scientific?

What have been the stated reasons for the dismissal and neglect of the claim of excess heat?

Scientists like to think of themselves as objective, unemotional stewards of the world's technology. The public, too, is generally comfortable with this view of scientists, trusting science advisers and scientific facts for critical decision making.

However, sometimes scientists respond emotionally. The cold fusion episode is one such circumstance.

Fear may be a dominant factor.

Author Charles G. Beaudette identified the matter of fear in his book Excess Heat & Why Cold Fusion Research Prevailed. Beaudette quotes a simple contemplation on the "difficult burden" of change from longshoreman-philosopher Eric Hoffer's The Ordeal of Change:

Beaudette then conveys a conversation that he had in the mid-1990s with Moshe Gai, a Yale University physics professor who played a prominent role in the 1989 dismissal of cold fusion.

"As we were quietly reminiscing about the spring of 1989," Beaudette wrote, "[Gai] suddenly made a somewhat violent, sweeping gesture with one arm, waving it at his wall of books, and declared, 'If cold fusion is true, then all of this is wrong.' Such was the element of fear in our topic."

The claim of excess heat without harmful radiation appeared to directly contradict many generations of scientific knowledge passed down from physicist to physicist since the 1930s. However, several theorists, each with their own unique perspective, are engaged in a fierce debate with models that offer alternative views showing how cold fusion research does not theoretically negate hot fusion research, but becomes part of a larger understanding of both fields.

Most nuclear physicists could not have known or imagined that the most unlikely nuclear product from hot fusion (helium-4) would be the most likely product of cold fusion experiments. And vice-versa, the most likely product of hot fusion (neutron flux) would be the least likely product of cold fusion.

Because cold fusion experiments were typically run at very low power levels, the energy release and commensurate levels of helium-4 were consequently very low and thus were difficult to measure. However, most skeptics failed to calculate this and were consequently unaware what a small amount of helium-4 would be produced. When strong results from the helium-4 experiments took longer than expected, many critics gave up waiting and declared the cold fusion hypothesis dead.

Nuclear physicists could not have imagined or known that low energy reactions in condensed matter could be explained in ways that included conventional fusion theory. They may not have remembered that hot fusion theory was originally phenomenologically fit to fusion experiments performed in a plasma, without regard for the possibility of reactions in condensed matter.

A New Doorway of Science

With the cold fusion discovery, new doorways to the secrets of nature were opened. Pieces of a new, as-yet-incomplete science were revealed to the world.

On a deeper level, many conventional nuclear researchers were challenged to consider that there was more to science than they had ever imagined. It challenged them to confront their own beliefs about science, nature and much of what they had learned throughout their careers. The fear of losing control, authority, funding and prestige was not without cause.

In this revolution, the new knowledge of low energy nuclear reactions implied new power, stature and funding, not to mention new knowledge of the physical universe. Scientists unwilling to make the effort to adapt were at great risk of losing everything.

"Revolutions, even nascent ones in science," Charles Beaudette wrote, "always hit hard and they hurt."

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