SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
ΙΝΜΓ,ΙΙΙ', BY STEPHEN Κ. RITTER
SCIENCE, RELIGION, AND THE ART OF COLD FUSION Despite quite opposite fundamental roots, science and religion can both rely on faith
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HE I O T H INTERNATIONAL CON-
ference on Cold Fusion is taking place this week in Cambridge, Mass. This milestone conference may come as a bit of a surprise to most members of the scientific commu nity, who probably thought that cold fu sion died a painful death shortly after it was first announced nearly 15 years ago. To recap, Martin Fleischmann of the University of Southampton, in England, and B. Stanley Pons of the University of Utah made the stunning announcement on March 23,1989, that they had achieved sustained nuclear fusion of deuterium atoms at ambient temperatures inside an electrolytic cell. Predictions were made that with the new method unlimited energy could be produced from seawater.
ly part of their observations could be at tributed to deuterium-deuterium fusion and the remainder was the result of "a hitherto unknown nuclear process or processes." The cold fusion furor quickly collapsed, and mainstream scientists wrote it off as an embarrassing mistake. "Vet to the cold fu sion faithful, a general feeling emerged that, even though there had been spurious re sults, Pons and Fleischmann weren't to tally wrong. They knew something was go ing on; they just couldn't prove it. Since 1997, the field has been mostly silent. A small band of researchers perse vere in studying "low-energy nuclear reac tions," as cold fusion is now called. Other curious phenomena such as bubble fusion stemming from acoustic cavitation and a supposedly new form of hydrogen called
EN MASSE Some 7,000 people attended a cold fusion symposium at the ACS meeting in Dallas in April 1989, hopeful that news of the phenomenon was true.
Fusion fever spread quickly Dozens of research labs worldwide began trying to repeat the experiments. There were a few scattered confirmations of excess heat or telltale signs of fusion in the form of neu trons or tritium produced. But cold fusion could not be reproduced on demand. Many researchers began to ascribe the unpredictable effects that were being ob served to calibration errors, electronic ar tifacts, variations in background radiation, and generally sloppy lab work. Pons and Fleischmann themselves admitted that on-
the hydrino have been added to the cul ture of "new energy research" as well. There is ever-growing evidence of anomalous effects but still no verification that fusion is actually taking place. There have been no breakthrough papers pub lished in top-tier journals. No Nobel Prizes. In late 1996, a purported cold fusion de vice went on the market. Apparently, it never caught on since we still don't have cold fusion devices powering cars, homes, or office buildings. %u can't buy one at Wal-Mart.
The research community at large now dismisses the ongoing research as "patho logical science," yet cold fusion researchers continue to maintain agenuine, optimistic belief that they are doing good work and that it's worth pursuing. Why? I ended up unexpectedly giving some thought to that question as a result ofpart of my summer reading. I have been work ing my way through a collection of essays, "Science and Religion: Are They Compatible?"This topic is one that every scientist broaches from time to time, if not in ani mated discussions with friends over din ner then at least in self-contemplation. While reading some of the essays, I was reminded that the claims of science rely on experimental verification while the claims ofreligion rely more simply on faith. It struck me that science also can, at times, require a measure of faith in the workings of the scientific method. Cold fusion is a case in point. Despite the wealth of evidence against cold fusion, it is still insufficient to put all the nails in the coffin. If one adheresrigorouslyto the scientific method, the research commu nity should reserve final judgment as long as research in this area continues. Cold fu sion researchers, though marginalized, thus continue to pursue their work. But why do they choose to do so? Obviously, they still have hopes for their research, but their persistence could justifiably be considered a leap of faith. Expressions of faith are familiar. Con sider masses of people who gather for reli gious ceremonies, such as Sunday Easter mass at the Vatican or the annual hajj to Mecca. I was reminded of these events when looking at old photosfromthe Amer ican Chemical Society national meeting in Dallas in April 1989. An estimated 7,000 people attended a hastily put together sym posium to hear about cold fusion just after the first announcement was made. The people who gathered in Dallas were hope ful that what they were hearingwas true. In the end, their faith in the scientific method was upheld, one way or the other. For now, cold fusion lives for those who believe. The burden ofproofis still on their shoulders, however, just as it is on the shoulders of the religious faithful to con vince nonbelievers. New data being re ported at the cold fusion meeting this week may or may not provide some answers.
Views expressed on this page are those of the author and not necessarily those of ACS. HTTP://WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG
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