COLD NUCLEAR FUSION BIBLIOGRAPHY
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Dieter Britz <britz@kemi.aau.dk>
Kemisk Institut, Aarhus Universitet, DK-8000 Aarhus C
Current no. of entries: 282
Last update: 09-Jul-03
Abbot A; Nature 363 (1993) (13-May) p.107.
"Italian court wrestles with cold fusion suit".
** Report of the trial of the newspaper La Repubblica on charges of defamation
of Preparata, Del Guidice, Bressani, Fleischmann and Pons, who stand to gain
about US$5 million (collectively). The paper had stated that cold fusion was a
fraud. Douglas Morrison is the paper's scientific advisor, and Giovanni
Licheri that of the court.
Abbott A; Nature 380 (1996) 369 (4 April issue).
"Scientists lose cold fusion libel case".
** Fleischmann, Pons and the Italian cold fusion workers Preparata, Bressani
and Guidice sued the Italian newspaper La Repubblica for libel, a couple of
years ago, and this long-running case just came to a judgement: The newspaper
was acquitted and the claimants are to pay the costs. Had they won, they would
have each received 1/5 of 8*10^9 lire, or roughly $10^6. The paper had
referrred to cold fusion as "scientific fraud", but the judge deemed this to
be merely free speech.
Adamson AW and Gast AP; Physical Chemstry of Surfaces, Wiley NY 1997, p.729.
** In the chapter on chemisorption and catalysis of this book (the 6th Edition
of a classic), the authors write "The ultimate catalysis would be that of
deuterium fusion - a highly exoergic reaction of enormous homogeneous
activation energy, the bypassing of which is, in principle, possible with a
suitable heterogeneous catalyst. Such a process would be called cold fusion."
Etc. The term "heterogeneous" means taking place at an interface. They go on
to give some references both in favour and against.
Alberts AH; Chem. & Eng. News 69(32) (1991) 3 (12-Aug).
"Cold fusion".
** Alberts criticises the editor of J. Electroanal. Chem. for uncritically (?)
publishing the Preliminary Note by Bush et al (JEC 304 (1991) 271), without
the refereeing process. Alberts writes that the critical paper by Wagner et
al, pointing out a possible defect in some calorimetric experiments, should be
given more attention.
Amato I; Science 260 (1993) (14-May) 895.
"Pons and Fleischmann redux?"
** Report of the P&F-93 paper in Physics Lett. A. Science has asked a number
of experts for their opinions on this. Huizenga says that all P&F work shows
systematic error; McKubre says that they still have an overall 6% heat excess,
compared with his 3%; active cnf researcher Oriani finds it difficult to
assess the paper; Nathan Lewis and Petrasso of MIT find it all too familiar.
Amato I; Science 256 (1992) (10-Apr), 178.
"Cluster fusion: Close, but no cigar".
** A first report of the demise of the cluster impact fusion affair, upon the
retraction of the results that started it. The Brookhaven Nat. Lab. team
Beuhler, Friedman and Friedlander had, up to now, defended their work,
claiming that their beams of heavy water clusters were indeed of homogeneous
cluster size; they now admit that some smaller cluster contaminants got in and
caused the "anomalous" results. This is revealed in Phys. Rev. Lett. of
30-Mar. Amato writes that the researchers have not quite given up, however.
Anderson DM; Science 249 (1990) 463 (3-Aug).
(Letter).
** Referring to Taubes' "Cold fusion conundrum at Texas A&M" in Science 248
(1990) 1299, the Associate Provost for Research etc at Texas A&M charges Gary
Taubes with careless reporting, claiming that there were sufficient controls
in the labs of Bockris and others to eliminate fraud or other misconduct. The
Administration was aware of Taubes' concerns and did, in fact, investigate.
They conclude that at worst, inexperience with poorly reproducible results are
to blame.
Anderson GC; Nature 344 (1990) 277 (issue 22 March).
"The party continues..." (News section).
** "Despite the urging of a recent DOE panel against 'any special funding' of
cold fusion research, the department plans to double its budget next year for
work in this field". $10**6 for 1990 and twice that for 1991, in order to
have some carefully controlled experiments done. Also, the state of Utah is
giving $5*10**6 to a cold fusion centre, essentially to Pons and Fleischmann
(has Hawkins been sacked?) and the Office of Naval Research has granted Pons
US$400,839 (what, no cents?) over 2.5 years.
Anderson C; Nature (London) 353 (1991) 98 (12-Sep-91).
"Cold fusion tempest at MIT".
** Report of Eugene Mallove's resignation from the MIT news office, with some
of the charges Mallove levels at some MIT workers, in his letter of
resignation. A MIT spokesman declines to comment but says that no complaints
are dismissed out of hand. Mallove remains a lecturer in science journalism at
MIT.
Andreani R; Energ. Nucl. (Rome) 6 (1989) 8 (in Italian).
"La fusione 'fredda'".
** An early discussion; among otherthings, it mentions Italian cold fusion
experiments.
Anon.; New Scientist 142 (1994)(1931), 23 (25 June).
"Cold fusion rides again" (under the Patents heading).
** Reports a patent (application?) by Canon, EP 568 118, using a gas discharge
between two metal electrodes in a hydrogen-filled chamber. Using magnesium or
palladium, gamma emissions are claimed.
Anon.; Nature 348 (1990) 1 (1-Nov-90).
"Utah confusion"
** Comment on the "disappearance" of Pons, at the time of the important
meeting of the Fusion Advisory Committee of the State of Utah, to decide
whether to continue to support the NCFI. The writer notes that fusion
researchers are beginning to separate into factions "professing the same
beliefs but unable to stomach each other's company", and expresses surprise
that the State of Utah can be completely rebuffed by Pons, yet continues to
support him.
Anon.; Science 262 (1993) 1643, 10-Dec.
"Utah puts fusion out in the cold".
** After 4 years and 8 months, The Univ. of Utah licensed off its patents to
the new firm ENERCO for a sum "in the low six figures". The involvement has
cost UU about $0.7m in legal fees. The University will receive royalties for
profits arising from the patents. ENECO's president Fred Jaeger says that they
will work closely woth F&P, thus "reuniting the inventors with the invention".
Anon.; Science 251 (1990) 1415 (22 March issue).
"Cold fusion: battle of the books".
** Brief mention of the fact that Frank Close's book will be out (in the US)
in May, and that there is another one on the way, by Eugene Mallove, evidently
favourable to cold fusion.
Anon.; Illustreret Videnskab no. 12 1994, p.62 (in Danish).
"That's why cold fusion became a research farce".
** A short 1-page item, telling nothing new; it has a very brief resume of
the cnf affair. The author states (erroneously) that physicists were on the
skeptical side, while chemists believed in cnf; also that after a few months
there were only a handful of believers left; and finally, that F&P now work
in France for an anonymous Japanese company. The title statement is not in
fact explained, i.e. why it became a farce.
Anon.; Nature 118 (1926) 455. "News and Views"
** Report of Paneth and Peters' claimed transmutation of hydrogen to helium,
see below under Paneth. Interestingly, the writer correctly pinpoints two
major problems: the large amounts of energy required to fuse 4H into He,
and that He could creep in as a contamination and give spurious results.
The article is carefully and neutrally phrased, and its style would not be
out of place in today's Nature.
Anon.; Naturwiss. 15 (1927) 379 (in German).
"Recent experiments on the transmutation of hydrogen into helium".
** The authors explain that, since there was a reprinting of their 1926 paper
on the subject in this journal, it is reasonable to also publish the
retraction in the same journal, as well as in the other (Ber. 60 (1927) 808).
The paper, then, is the same as the original - also, for the same reason,
published in Nature by Paneth (1927).
Anon.; Nature 118 (1926) 526.
"The reported conversion of hydrogen into helium".
** For non-German readers, this is a good description, in English, of the
paper by Paneth and Peters (1926), see below.
Anon.; Nature 338 (1989) 706 (News and Views, 27 April)
"Fusion in 1926: plus ca change"
** A more accessible flashback to the Nature report of 1926 of Paneth and
Peters' work, and Paneth's retraction in Nature.
Anon.; Nature 338 (1989) 447 (News, 6 April)
"Cold fusion causes frenzy but lacks confirmation"
** This is only two weeks after the news of CNF broke. The article reports
apparent confirmation from other laboratories in Japan and Hungary, which
were not heard from later.
Anon.; Nature 338 (1989) 529 (News, 13 April)
"Prospect of achieving cold fusion tantalizes"
** More confirmation reports, from Texas A&M and Georgia (USA). Also
gives some background to the FPH vs. Jones+ problems.
Anon.; Nature 338 (1989) 537 (News and Views, 13 April)
"Hot-footed towards cold fusion"
** A summary of FPH's original paper in J. Electroanal. Chem., and some
discussion.
Anon.; Nature 338 (1989) 529 (Opinion, 20 April)
"Cold fusion in print"
** Advance notification that the next issue will contain Jones+'s article,
and the comment that the fact that FPH's paper was not - as originally
intended - published in Nature, should not be misunderstood. The decision
was the authors', after they received the referees' reports. This does not
invalidate the work.
Anon.; Nature 338 (1989) 605 (News, 20 April)
"Scientific look at cold fusion inconclusive".
** Report of the Dallas meeting of the American Chemical Society meeting.
Apparently, there were some chemists there (out of 7000!) who took CNF to
be a victory of chemistry over physics. Pons makes fun of tokamak physicists.
Anon.; Nature 338 (1989) 529 (News, 27 April)
"Hopes for nuclear fusion continue to turn cool"
** Claims of success from California, India and Brazil and mass spectroscopic
evidence from Pons, of He(4) production. Also a report that Pons, at a press
conference on 17 April, stated that trials with normal water also produced
heat - this was later to be hotly disputed by Fleischmann. Huggins found
that heavy-water cells produce 15% more heat than light-water cells.
Anon.; Nature 389 (1997) (4-Sep) 10 (News in Brief).
"Japan ends funding for 'cold' fusion project".
** Reports that the Japan MITI decided to terminate the cold fusion project
when the five-year term expires next March. It will then have spent about $25
million on it. MITI is quoted as saying that the project has resulted in
advances in calorimeter design for excess heat measuremnent.
Anon.; Science 244 (1989) 403 (This Week in Science, 28 April).
"Cold fusion".
** Resume of Pool's article elsewhere in the same issue (p.420).
Anon.; Science 245 (1989) 31 (Random Samples 7 July).
"Cold fusion Couture"
** CNF T-shirts are sold at the U of Utah, showing smiling Pons and
Fleischmann, a beaker with seawater and the sun. They sell like hot cakes.
Anon.; (Editor); Physik in unserer Zeit 20 (1989) 93 (May) (in German).
"Nuclear fusion in an electrolysis cell?"
** After an introduction on possible fusion reactions, describes the Jones+
results and those of FPH, without drawing conclusions other than to say
that we cannot hope for a clean energy source from this - even if it turns
out to work - because the radiation would give rise to radioactive byproducts.
Anon.; New Scientist 124 (1989) 25, no. 1690, 11-Nov. This Week.
"Cold water on cold fusion"
** Report of the DoE report (see also David Lindley, Nature). The committee
finds only academic interest and recommends no more than modest support.
Anon.; New Scientist 124 (1989) 18 (issue 1695, Dec. 16)
"Test-tube fusion fails the final test" - Science report.
** Although this report starts with mention of the two Japanese claims of
success, the report is mainly about two heavily negative publications:
those of Nathan Lewis, and Williams et al, and thus the title conclusion.
Anon.; Nature (London) 340 (1989) 412. Issue 17. Aug.
"Cold fusion, anyone?" (Product notice under "New on the Market").
** The firms Thermonetics and Hart Scientific offer calorimeters and the
J.M. Ney Company offers palladium electrodes to FPH's specifications, all
for others eager to have a go.
Anon.; Science 247 (1990) 36 (6. April).
"Utah scientist: No cold fusion" (Briefings section).
** Report on the Salamon et al paper in Nature, and of Pons' response, i.e.
that the Salamon team left out a positive result. The Salamon et al paper
does discuss this, however.
Anon.; Nature (London) 344 (1990) 365 (29. March).
"Farewell (not fond) to cold fusion". (Editorial).
** A comment referring to the polemic elsewhere in the same issue of Nature,
by David Lindley, and summarising the past year of cold fusion. Clearly, the
editors of Nature have written off cold fusion as a real phenomenon, and talk
of Pons and Fleischmann possibly "making a clean breast of it" at the
forthcoming conference (see N. Hall, below) - which they did not do. The
editors feel that the cold fusion affair has damaged the image of science by
the associated secrecy, and suggest that the scientists involved should now
come forward and tell us exactly what they have done and admit that cold
fusion has no economic potential.
Anon.; New Scientist 126 (1990) 29 (no. 1713, 21 April).
"Citations track the fate of cold fusion" (In Brief section).
** Cites an issue of Science Watch, published by the Institute for Scientific
Information (ISI), Philadelphia, and shows their graph of citations of the
FPH paper from April 1989 to January 1990, in monthly lumps and divided into
positive, neutral and negative citations. This shows a decline in the monthly
number of papers by January 1990, citations of FPH running at about 2/month.
The numbers are small and no trend can be seen in the distribution of
positive, neutral and negative citations, but overall, the ratio of (+,0,-)
is (0.27,0.21,0.52).
Anon.; Science 248 (1990) 1487, 22-Jun.
"Cold fusion claims a victim" (Briefings section).
** The victim is U of U's president Chase N. Peterson, because of his
bungling of the $500000 "anonymous donation" affair.
Anon.; Science 272 (19 April 1996) 351.
"Hollywood chain reaction"
** Small review of the film Chain Reaction, in which Keanu Reeves plays a
scientist who discovers energy too cheap to meter coming out of bubbles in
an ultrasonic field.
Anon.; Science 272 (26 April 1996) 487.
"Cold fusion gets a drubbing in Italian Court".
** Report of the court decision in Italy not to award damages to Fleischmann,
Pons and several Italian cold fusion scientists, because of a statement in
the newspaper La Repubblica, calling CNF "scientific fraud". There are quotes
from Morrison and Fleischmann, who had not yet read the 14-page court ruling.
Among other things, the decision was due to inconsistent information given to
the court by P&F.
Anonymous (Feedback); New Scientist no. 2254, 2 Sep. 2000, p.96.
(Untitled)
** Feedback reports that Paul LaViolette, the maverick (ex) patent examiner
in the US Patent and Trademarks Office, appeals against his dismissal,
claiming that he was dismissed because of his belief in cold fusion. There is
a precedent for treating sincerely held beliefs the same as religious beliefs,
and LaViolette will base his suit on that. So far, he seems to have won a
round.
Anonymous; New Scientist 10-Apr-93, p.3.
"Gotcha!"
** No, several surprising bits of news were not April Fool jokes, despite
being in that issue of NS. There were a lot of phone calls, which raised some
questions. Alluding to A.C. Clarke, NS writes that magic might turn into plain
old science; which might explain why the US House of Reps. once more listened
to pleas to put money into cold fusion research. Had they waited one more
week, writes NS, it could have been an April Fool joke.
Armstrong RD; Electrochim. Acta 34 (1989) 1287.
"Editorial: The cold fusion debate".
** A plea for publication in the proper journals, giving full details.
Bashkin S; Physics Today March 1994, p. 95. Letter.
** Following a review of Taubes' book "Bad Science" by Williams, Bashkin
comments that the prehistory of cold fusion has been forgotten (which it
has not), i.e. the 1926 work of Paneth and Peters and that of Tandberg in
the 1930's.
Baszutov YN, Goryachev IV; Fusion Technol. 38 (2000) 253.
Meeting Report: "Resolution of the seventh Russian Conference on Cold Nuclear
Transmutation of Chemical Elements (RCCNT-7), September 27-October 2, 1997".
** The authors report on the conference, where 30 participated, from Russia,
the USA and Italy. There are two main results: (1) The effect can only be
observed in condensed media and (2) only under these media's saturation with
a hydrogen isotope. The participants agreed that further work is needed.
Bauer HH; J. Sci. Exploration 4 (1991) 267.
Book review: "Too Hot to Handle: The Race for Cold Fusion".
** Electrochemist and science philosopher HH Bauer reviews Frank Close's book.
While it compares well with the "pot boiler" by Peat, it appears to have major
failings. For example, Close does not know the stature of Fleischmann, and
does not explain some things of importance such as FPH's derivation of the
famous fugacity of 1E27 (HHB does not mention that this is itself a doubtful
concept). As for the sections of the book of a science-philosophical nature,
HHB considers them very weak, and suggests a separate book on the subject.
There are complaints (not for the first time) about the proofreading and
editing of the book.
Bauer HH; J. Sci. Exploration 6 (1992) 395.
Book review: "Cold Fusion: The Scientific Fiasco of the Century", J. Huizenga.
** Science philosopher and electrochemist H.H. Bauer reviews Huizenga's book.
Bauer begins with the statement that cold fusion, like the magnetic monopole
or gravity waves, is yet to be verified, and no concensus has been reached.
Huizenga's book presents an occasion to discuss cold fusion claims, but is
wrong in many ways. While being valuable in giving an account of the DOE
investigation, the book fails to be as up-to-date as it could be, is dogmatic
and one-sided, partisan, shallow, offensively personal, and uses innuendo.
Scientists in general and Huizenga in particular do not know much about the
history of science but feel free to cite it nevertheless. Huizenga's
invocation of pathological science is inappropriate and his history
superficial, writes Prof. Bauer.
Bishop J; Popular Science Aug-93, 47.
"It ain't over till it's over... Cold Fusion".
** Written by the reporter who broke the news in 1989 in the Wall Street
Journal, this is an update of the cnf affair, giving the 4+ year old history.
Apart from the academic efforts in the area, the private enterprises that have
sprung out are also mentioned, such as Tom Droege's basement work, the
Clustron Inc. Co. with Mallove and Rothwell as principals, Harold Fox's
several enterprises and Japan's investments. Bishop writes that 4He has not
been found, citing as the sole exception Yamaguchi's work, and ignoring the
China Lake results. He recommends Taubes book.
Bishop JE; The Wall Street Journal March 23 (1989) B1.
"Development in atom fusion to be unveiled".
** Report, prior to the press conference given by Fleischmann and Pons, of
their cold fusion claim, along with a well researched article on the
background of the subject.
Bishop JE; The Wall Street Journal June 7 (1990) B4.
"Scientist says 'cold fusion' tests may have had some impure rods".
** The "nail-in-the-coffin" article, in which Kevin Wolf is reported to say
that at least some of his palladium electrodes were contaminated by tritium.
Bockris, however, in whose lab much greater amounts of tritium have been
found, rejects this as an explanation. He is still convinced that they found
tritium generated in the cells.
Bishop JE; Wall Street Journal January 29 1996, p. A7A.
"A bottle rekindles scientific debate about the possibility of cold fusion".
JEB redundantly writes that "it's deja vu all over again", about the Patterson
cell of beads, claimed to be producing massive amounts of excess heat. Several
experts are quoted, both pro and con and JEB mentions that a US patent has been
granted. "The dubious" Dr. Birnbaum, one of the experts [JEB presumably means
"doubtful"] is finally quoted using words such as "atrocious science" and
"flimflam".
Bockris J; New Scientist 129 (1990)(1752) 50 (19 Jan).
"Cold fusion II: the story continues".
** Unlike Frank Close, who writes Part I, p.46, in the same issue, JB is
convinced that cold fusion takes place. He concentrates on the technical
evidence, and points out some strong results, such as neutron bursts correlated
with a rise in tritium level. He summarises the pros and cons in a table.
Bockris JO'M; C&EN September 6, 1993, p. 4. (Letter)
** Bockris complains that an earlier article in C&EN (June 14) was biased
against cold fusion, by emphasising comments by well known opponents of cnf.
Bockris writes that this is a deception, with 1000 workers worldwide, Japanese
funding by $50 million, 27 Russian research institutes all for cnf. He
suggests dropping the name 'cold fusion' (although fusion certainly occurs, he
writes) and substituting 'chemically stimulated nuclear reactions'.
Bockris JO'M; Science 249 (1990) 463 (3-Aug). (Letter).
** Referring to Taubes' "Cold fusion conundrum at Texas A&M" in Science 248
(1990) 1299, Bockris says that the cold fusion experiments run in his labs are
very laborious and time-consuming. "What was the purpose, then, of printing a
gossip-based account which, by strong innuendo, suggests that a graduate
student of mine faked his results?", he asks. He goes on to say that even if
there were tritium in the Pd electrodes, it would not come out under the
cathodic conditions and cites 26 other labs that have found tritium.
Bockris JO'M; Science 251 (1991) 499 (1-Feb-91).
"Cold fusion results".
** A letter rebutting R. Pool's claims that the Bockris school has not found
tritium for a year. On the contrary, says Bockris, 37 groups have found it
and Thomas Claytor of LANL can produce it at will. Also, Bockris says that
there were no irregularities in the oral examination of Packham.
Bockris JO'M; Forum Appl. Res. Public Policy 7(4) (1992) 91.
"Hesitant birth of cold fusion".
** Bockris summarises his view of cold fusion. He mentions attacks on its
proponents and relates some personal experiences to show that the scientific
establishment is suppressing the field of study. Peer review is in doubt.
Borella G; Panorama 18-Apr-1993, p. 166 (in Italian).
"Uova d'aqua". (Egg of water).
** A popular article, describing the latest theory of Prof. Preparata, Milano,
and coworker Del Guidice, as well as the persons themselves. Water, they point
out, is quite anomalous. They suggest the existence of egg-like clumps and
long-range cooperative properties in water, even at ambient temperatures. They
then suggest that this may have bearing on cold fusion, as well as support the
claims by Benveniste a few years ago, who claimed a kind of structural memory
in water, and was ridiculed, especially by the journal Nature, in which his
paper appeared.
Bown W; New Scientist 8-Jan-94.
"Ancient experiment turns up on cold fusion".
** In the early 1960's, O. Reifenschweiler, at the Philips labs in Eindhoven,
found that when he heated a mixture containing tritium, its radioactivity
declined by 28%, as measured by the beta count. The mixture was presumably in
a closed container (although the note does not say so). Now Casimir, the
former research director at Philips, has decided with Reifenschweiler to
publish this result and the paper should appear in the Jan. 3 issue of Physics
Letters A.
Bown W; New Scientist no. 1871, May 1 1993, p.6.
"Frosty reception greets cold fusion figures".
** A commentary prompted by the news that "next week", there will appear a new
paper by F&P in Physics Letters A. Bown comments that scientists who have
attempted a replication of the effect have concluded that it is chemical, if
anything, and of little use in any case. One of the journal's editors, Vigier,
is quoted as saying that it is not fusion, as fusion products - neutrons,
tritium etc - are lacking. The graph shown from the paper shows excess heat,
after deuterium charging, of about the same magnitude as the heat of
deuteration. This is less than claimed previously. Fleischmann himself is said
to be unsure whether the effect is nuclear, but thinks it could be a new
fusion process. Morrison and Williams are quoted as skeptical.
Braun T; J. Radionucl. Chem. Lett. 136(3) (1989) 1.
"World flash on cold fusion. No. 1".
** A short collection of publications relevant to cold fusion, news of which
had just broken. The FPH and Jones+ papers and some newspaper reports are
listed.
Braun T; J. Radionucl. Chem. Lett. 137 (1989) 407.
"World flash on cold fusion. No. 2".
** Braun lists more cnf papers he has read, and provides a rough but useful
classification, ticking off heat, neutrons, gamma rays, tritium, theory and
hypotheses/comments, as applicable.
Braun T; J. Radionucl. Chem. Lett. 144 (1989) 161.
"World flash on cold fusion. No. 3".
** More papers on cold fusion.
Braun T; J. Radionucl. Chem. Lett. 144 (1989) 323.
"World flash on cold fusion. No. 4".
** More papers on cold fusion.
Braun T; J. Radionucl. Chem. Lett. 145 (1989) 1.
"World flash on cold fusion. No. 5".
** More papers on cold fusion.
Braun T; J. Radionucl. Chem. Lett. 145 (1989) 245.
"World flash on cold fusion. No. 6".
** More papers on cold fusion. Braun comments that the situation is quiet.
Braun T; J. Radioanal. Nucl. Chem., Lett. 145 (1990) 385.
"World flash on cold fusion. No. 7"
** Braun's selected, annotated bibliography continues.
Braun T; J. Radioanal. Nucl. Chem., Lett. 146 (1990) 289.
"World flash on cold fusion. No. 8".
** Braun continues to list cold fusion articles that he has read. He notes
that reports now appear in journals, rather than on newspaper front pages.
Braun T; J. Radioanal. Nucl. Chem., Lett. 153 (1991) 1.
"World flash on cold fusion. No. 9".
** As the name implies, no. 9 in the series.
Braun T; J. Radioanal. Nucl. Chem., Lett. 154 (1991) 1.
"World flash on cold fusion. No. 10".
** No. 10 in the series.
Braun T; J. Radioanal. Nucl. Chem., Lett. 154 (1991) 237.
"World flash on cold fusion. No. 11".
** No. 11 in the series.
Braun T; J. Radioanal. Nucl. Chem., Lett. 155 (1991) 141.
"World flash on cold fusion. No. 12".
** No. 12 in the series.
Braun T; J. Radioanal. Nucl. Chem., Lett. 164 (1992) 137.
"World flash on cold fusion. No. 13 (the final one in the series)".
** No. 13 in the series, and THE END. Prof. Braun comments on the number 13
and its appropriateness to the cold fusion situation. He refers the reader to
Prof. Bruce Lewenstein's chronology for more information.
Briand J-P; Recherche 21 (1990) 1282 (issue 225, Oct-90; in French).
"'Cold' fusion eighteen months later".
** A brief skeptical review of the cold fusion affair, with 15 references.
The difficulties of weak radiation measurement and calorimetry are pointed
out, and the fact that physicists are generally skeptical.
Broad W; New York Times June 8, 1990.
"Contamination at 3 Labs Casts Doubt On Results Pointing to Cold Fusion".
** Kevin Wolf of Texas A&M and Edmund K. Storm and Carol Talcott of Los
Alamos all retract their tritium findings; the tritium was in the palladium
they used, in the first place (they used the same source). This was reported
the previous day in the Wall Street Journal.
Bush B; C&EN p.5, Sep 7 (1992).
"(4)He studies misrepresented"
** Bush criticises Huizenga's letter, in which H alleges that no evidence for
helium production in cold fusion experiments exists, thereby implicating the
China Lake study, mentioned in Huizenga's book. Contrary to Huizenga's
rejection of this study, Bush confirms that there was a high correlation
between helium and heat, the chance of getting these results by accident being
exceedingly small.
Byun JH; Hwahak Kwa Kongop Ui Chinbo 30 (1990) 86 (in Korean).
Cited in Chem. Abstr. 113:199182 (1990).
"Cold nuclear fusion".
** "Review and reflections on the controversies surrounding cold fusion,
including a list of Korean organizations and personnel funded to carry out
related studies are given, with 12 refs."
Charles D; New Scientist no. 1827, 27-Jun-92, p.4
"Piece of teflon led to fatal explosion".
** Although the investigation continues at SRI, some conclusions have been
reached about the cause of the explosion of a cold fusion cell in January '92,
which killed Andrew Riley and injured some others. The events are thought to
have been: a loose piece of teflon near the gas outlet blocked that outlet, as
some gas escaped with a rush. The same rush also wet the catalyst in the head
space, consisting of some Pd spheres. After this, the cell accumulated up to
30 atm of pressure of D2 and O2, which could not recombine fast enough on the
wet catalyst. When Riley moved the cell, perhaps some Pd was exposed, setting
up an explosive burn of the D2 with the O2; the bottom of the cell was blown
out and the cell, now a rocket, hit Riley.
Charles comments that several cold fusion workers have seen Pd electrodes glow
red-hot when exposed to air after electrolysis. Cold fusion work at SRI has
been suspended since the accident, but researchers are asking for more funds,
partly for equipment to prevent recurrence of such an accident.
Chown M; New Scientist 144 (1956) (17-Dec-1994) 11.
"Net backs probe into cold fusion".
** Reports that 'physicists' have pooled to send Tom Droege to Atlanta to
examine the Griggs machine, supposed to generate more heat than the power put
into it. This arose from discussions in the Usenet group 'Sci.Physics.Fusion'.
More than $1000 has been raised, Douglas Morrison is quoted as saying.
Chubb S; Fusion Technol. 39 (2001) 288.
"Excess Heat: Why Cold Fusion Research Prevailed" (Book review).
** Scott Chubb reviews the book of thaqt title, by Beaudette, favourably.
It is indeed a sober, thoughtful and well written effort, and makes the
strong point that excess heat has not been competently disputed, as well
as raising some scice-sociological issues. Chubb focusses on the question of
whether nature has fooled various people.
Chubb SR; Physics Today, Sep. 1996, pp 15 & 117 (Letters).
"More on Schwinger's views on cold fusion".
** Chubb adds to a previous obituary for Schwinger, pointing out the Nobel
prize winner's activity in cold fusion. He stresses that Schwinger believed in
high D/Pd loadings. He cites only secondary sources.
Close F; Nature 358 (1992) 291 (23-Jul).
"The cold war remembered"
** Frank Close, himself the author of one of the better books on cold fusion,
here reviews John Huizenga's "Cold Fusion: The Scientific Fiasco of the
Century". Close likes the book and his only criticism is on a point where he
believes Huizenga's history of events is out by a crucial few days. Close
rightly considers Huizenga's outline of the helium episodes - Walling and
Simon's publication of their paper even after P&F's helium retraction, and
Pons's sabotage of the double-blind helium study - as highlights of the book.
Close F; New Scientist 129 (1990)(1752) 46 (19 Jan).
"Cold fusion I: the discovery that never was".
** A condensate of Close's book, which has just appeared. Close pronounces
cold fusion dead, and goes behind the scenes to prove it. According to him,
the prominent figures in this field have been less than honest on some crucial
points. He dismisses the persistent small group of researchers with positive
results with "... though it is still being pursued in isolated pockets around
the globe". See also Part II, by Bockris.
Close F; Forum Appl. Res. Public Policy 7(4) (1992) 84.
"Test-tube fusion: The loud beginning".
** A condensation of FC's book on the subject, focussing especially on the
mobile gamma peak. Nuclear effects seem to be ruled out.
Close F; New Scientist 130 (1991) 12 (issue 1765, 20-Apr).
"Frank Close replies".
** Reply to Fleischmann's commment on the same page (heading: Talking Point).
The issue is the story of the gamma peak in the original FPH(89) paper, which
FC is trying to explain.
Close F; American Scientist 81 (1993) 83 (Jan-93 issue).
"From farce to fiasco".
** Frank Close's review of "Cold Fusion: The Scientific Fiasco of the Century"
by John Huizenga. Close has himself written a similarly critical book on the
subject, and here appears to agree with Huizenga, who will not allow any
possibility that some real phenomenon might lie behind "cold fusion".
Close FE; C&EN 70(15) (1992), 13-Apr, 2 (Letters).
"Cold fusion research".
** A reply to Eugene Mallove's letter, criticising the reviews of his book on
cold fusion, by Trevor Pinch and then by Frank Close. EM accused both of
arrogant misunderstanding. Close replies that his dismissal of cold fusion is
not due to arrogance, but to many analyses of the available evidence. Close goes
on to argue that where excess heat is found, it must be due to an unknown
chemical effect, as no nuclear products are found commensurate with the heat.
Evidence of tritium, neutrons and charged particles are not, as EM claims,
impressive but sporadic and too low in intensity. The few quality results are
at variance with each other, and the simplest explanation, feels Close, is an
error. EM invokes the test of history and FC is willing to wait for it.
Coghlan A; New Scientist no. 1981, 18-Sep-93, p.20
"Just turn on the tap to fill up the tank?"
** Report of an apparatus, recently patented by one Stanley Meyer, which
uses anomalous electrolysis of water to provide energy. Water is electrolysed
using small ac currents (0.5 mA, 20 kV at 10-20 kHz). The energy to split the
water into hydrogen and oxygen (which can then be burned to give heat, to
drive a vehicle, for example) is thought (by Meyer) to come from zero point
energy, so this is no perpetual motion claim.
Cohen JS, Davies JD; Nature (London) 388 (1989) 705 (News and Views 27 April).
"The cold fusion family" (Section editor's title).
** A clear outline of possible fusion reactions, muon catalysis, cosmic
rays, "Moessbauer fusion", branching ratios. This commentary is also (I
think) the first to refer to the Klyuev et al paper of 1986, which reported
neutron emission from cracks in mechanically bombarded LiD crystals; the
authors call what happens there "microscopically hot fusion".
Collins H, Pinch T in: "The Golem", Cambridge UP 1993, ISBN 0 521 35601 6.
Chapter 3: "The sun in a test tube: the story of cold fusion".
** Collins and Pinch, two sociologists of science, here more or less relate
the story of cold fusion "as is", without much attempt at comment. They
extract from the story the message that here, the workings of science are
exposed; but that claims of greed or publicity seeking are not unusual, i.e.
that in this affair, science works as usual.
Cookson C; Financial Times (London) 23.3.1989, pp. 1, 28, 26.
"Test tube nuclear fusion claimed" and (p.26) "Nuclear fusion in a test tube".
** Simultaneously with the Wall Street Journal article (see Bishop 1989), this
is one of the two newspaper reports on cold fusion that startled the world
in March 1989.
Craig H; Nature 351 (1991) (May 23) 264.
"All over now" (Letter)
** As a comment on Pippard's review of Frank Close's book Too Hot to Handle,
Harmon Craig wrote this poem:
The cheers for Cold Fusion,
were last year's illusion;
What's left of a quorum.
Is the Pons Asinorum.
Crawford M; Science 244 (1989) 138 (News and Comment, 14 April).
"Budget squeeze causes fission in fusion labs"
** This is about funding problems for plasma fusion; CNF is mentioned.
Crawford M; Science 244 (1989) 423 (Research News, 28 April).
"Cold fusion: Is it hot enough to make power?"
** Discusses the possibilities.
Crawford M; Science 244 (1989) 522 (News and Comment, 5 May).
"Utah looks to Congress for cold fusion cash".
** Utah's fund raising moves.
Crawford MH; Science 245 (1989) 705 (Briefings 18 August).
"Utah keeps the faith"
** A 9-member panel at the U of Utah voted $4.5 million for CNF. A chemist
on the panel voted against; Wilford Hansen of the physics dept. abstained.
Crooks RM; Science 263 (1994) 106 (7-Jan).
"Cold Fusion revisited". Review of Taubes "Bad Science".
** RMC says straight-out that this is far and away the best book written on
cold fusion; the others were either rushed into publication or serve as a
soap box. He goes on to describe the book, and has few complaints except that
Taubes appears to have geographic prejudices against some universities "in the
provinces". RMS has talked to 10 out of the 257 persons interviewed by Taubes,
and these 10 vouch for the correctness of the rendition ("80 to 90%").
Crum L.A. and Matula T.J.; Science 276 (1997) (May 30), 1348.
"Shocking revelations".
** The authors, themselves active in the field of sonoluminesence, here give a
roundup of current theory of the effect. The Casimir theory of Eberlein, the
electron bremsstrahlung theory, the old Jarman theory of shock waves and a new
theory involving a chemical reaction, are mentioned, as well as some recent
findings.
Czirr JB, Harrison BK, Jensen GL, Jones SE, Palmer EP;
American Scientist 80 (1992) (Mar-Apr), 107 (Letters to the Editor).
(no title)
** Polemic response to Rousseau's article in a previous issue of this journal,
in which he names cold fusion as an example of pathological science, and
mistakenly associates the Jones group with the FPH group. The present writers
point out that they have repeatedly distanced themselves from the claims of
FPH and do not subscribe to measurable amounts of excess heat. Also, all of
their work has been properly peer-reviewed and they have not engaged lawyers
to threaten others. Some of Rousseau's chronology is also in error (to do with
the Jones/FPH collaboration ideas). The writers then describe the history of
their involvement with cold fusion, as evidence that the work is standard
science and not pathological. Nascent fields of science, they write, should
not be branded as pathological purely because they produce unexpected results,
inevitable for a nascent field. There are many contemporary examples of such
fields and they are not commonly called pathological.
See Rousseau, ibid Jan-Feb 1992, p. 54, and a response in this issue, p.108.
Dagani R; C&EN, 14-Jun-93, 38.
"Latest cold fusion results fail to win over skeptics".
** Report of the FLeischmann and Pons paper in the journal Phys. Lett. A,
which has fuelled the controversy on cold fusion. There are comments by
McKubre, Noninski, Huizenga, Bard, Morrison and Hagelstein, all taking the
expected point of view. The authors themselves could not be reached by Ron
Dagani. Vigier, an editor of the journal and the person who facilitated the
paper, is cited as believing that "very tight electron orbits" are the
underlying mechanism for the excess heat claimed.
Dagani R; C&EN News Jan. 14, 1991, p.4.
"Cold fusion: Utah pressures Pons, Fleischmann".
** Fritz Will, the director of the Cold Fusion Institute at Utah, tells C&EN
that have been severed from it and that their funding will be cut off unless
they disclose certain data and fully cooperate with a new review committee.
The council has, however, approved the release of the remaining 0.9E06 $ to
the CNFI.
Dagani R; Chem. Eng. News 68(16) (1990) 28 (April 16).
"Advocates, skeptics alike still puzzled by cold fusion".
** Report of the 1st Annual Conference on Cold Fusion, March 1990, Salt Lake
City, Utah. Most attendees appeared to be either positive, hopeful or at
least openminded; very few real skeptics attended (Petrasso and Kellogg were
there). Pons insisted that he keeps getting excess heat, up to 100-1000 times
what is expected from conceivable chemical reactions. F&P also still claim
tritium but give no details. Forthcoming publications are promised, one (July)
in Fusion Technology and a 100-page article in J.Electroanal.Chem. (there is
no mention of whether this has been accepted; 100 pp is a big slice of that
journal).
Nine labs claim tritium; Murphy of Texas A&M claims both D2O and Li are
necessary. Problems are obvious, such as the strange ratios, e.g. T/n should
be unity but isn't, etc. This leads to desperate suggestions: some delegates
suggest that there might be several different nuclear reactions occurring,
some in the bulk (producing heat), some at the surface (tritium?). These
chemists are aware of the fact that He, if formed in the Pd, would be trapped
there, and F&P have had their electrodes analysed for He - none was found.
Dagani R; Chem. & Eng. News, 18. June 1990, p. 5.
"Cold fusion dogged by more controversy".
** A round-up of the recent troubles, mentioning the resignation of Univ. of
Utah president, Chase N. Peterson and the background to this; the legal
threats to the Salamon team by lawyer Gary Triggs (and his retraction of the
threats) and the tritium contaminations, as well as the doubts about Bockris'
high tritium levels.
Dagani R; C&EN 67 (1989), April, p. 4.
"Fusion confusion: New data, but skepticism persists".
** An early update on the CNF affair, then only one month old. F&P confirm
all claims, including the detection of 4He by mass spectrometry. RD writes
that a preliminary note was published in "a Swiss electrochemical journal";
JEC is meant. Pons is quoted saying that "Recent tests ... produced about
eight times more energy than is consumed as electricity".
Dagani R; C&EN April 29 1996 p.69.
"Cold fusion lives - sort of".
Ron Dagani reports on the new magazine Infinite Energy. He says forget Nature
and Science, here we have either the cutting edge, or we are over the edge.
He mentions that cold fusioneers no longer insist on a nuclear fusion reaction
and he discusses the CETI (Patterson) cell of beads. He wonders why "cold
fusion" still lingers on, and likens it with the urine movement (advocating
the therapeutic value of drinking urine), similarly lingering. He concludes
that it is up to "cold fusion" proponents to prove their point.
Daviss B; New Scientist 29 March (2003)
"Reasonable doubt".
** An account of the cold fusion story with special emphasis on certain
workers, such as Szpak, Mosier-Boss, Miles (see their photos). This is a
neutral account, leaving room for the thesis that cold fusion is real. Frank
Gordon, department chief of Szpak's lab, believes that some modest funding
should be devoted to cold fusion. The piece focusses especially on the
travails of the Szpak team and Miles, both of whom feel poorly treated.
Del Giudice E, Preparata G; Nature 381 (1996) 729 (Correspondence).
"Jury still out on cold fusion?" (Editors' title; letter is untitled).
** The two Italian authors object to Nature's report, a few issues back, of
the outcome of the Italian court case they and 3 others led against the
newspaper La Repubblica, and which they lost. nature had implied that the
court thus upheld the newspaper's claim that cold fusion is scientific fraud.
The authors correct this, pointing out that nowhere was this stated in the
court's decision. In fact, the court acknowledges that anomalous excess heat
has been produced, as advised by the court consultant. The authors end by
predicting ridicule for the True Unbelievers of cold fusions, soon.
Dickman S; Nature 338 (1989) 529 (News, 27 April)
"1920s discovery, retraction"
** Description of the work of Paneth and Peters in 1926 and -27, giving all
the references; mentions also Tandberg's Swedish patent application.
Donne AJH, Oomens AAM; Nat. Tech. (Netherlands) 58(2) (1990) 118 (in Dutch).
"Sun on Earth. Trends in fusion research".
** A descriptive survey of fusion research, ending with a small section on
cold fusion, without reference to the FPH paper.
Douglas J; EPRI J. 14 (1989) 20.
"In hot pursuit of cold fusion".
** An early, thorough article on cold fusion.
Ebert K; Nachr. Chem. Tech. Lab. 37 (1989) 470 (in German).
"Elektrochemisch induzierte Fusion von Deuterium" (Electrochemically induced
fusion of deuterium).
** Early comment, reporting on the initial F&P press conference and the paper
in JEC. The article is not very critical, raising only a slight doubt as to
the applicability of the Nernst equation to an overvoltage (the famous 0.8eV).
Elbek B; Kvant 1(1) (1990) 3 (in Danish).
"What has happened with cold fusion?"
** Bent Elbek, one of the first to comment on The Affair (albeit only in a
local journal, like this one), does another roundup, after 18 months. He waxes
a little philosophic on the topic of burden of proof (it's on those who make
cold fusion claims, not on the skeptics) and mentions muon catalysis. At the
end, he censures cold fusioneers for their unscientific publication habits,
like press conferences, and sees the possibility of "cold fusion in the
future, but hardly in the form one briefly believed in in 1989". Aug-90
Fleischmann M; New Scientist 130 (1991) 12 (issue 1765, 20-Apr).
"Cold fusion: reply to critics".
** Fleischmann commments on Frank Close's statements with respect to the gamma
peak in the FPH(89) paper. This peak was later shifted and deformed, and the
circumstances surrounding this are obscure. FC has pointed out the confusion,
and MF here writes that the change was simply due to a different kind of
interpolation, and that FC has not looked at the literature properly.
Fox B; New Scientist 128(1742) (1990) 12 (10-Nov).
"Patents blow the lid on cold fusion".
** Having applied for a string (7) of patents on cold fusion in the USA,
Fleischmann and Pons have now also applied for an International patent
(application WO 90/10935), which reveals all. Interestingly, the Utah chemists
Walling and Simons (the "innocent chemists") have their names on the patent,
for their "theory" of what might be happening (i.e. the process, for some
unknown reason, leads to (4)He and gamma emission). Hawkins, the coauthor of
the seminal paper, who was inadvertently left out of the author list in that
paper, does not appear in the patent. Barry Fox states that the patent's
wording is vague throughout.
Frank A; Exploratorium Quarterly (Winter 1991) 12.
"Fooling ourselves".
** Adam Frank, a graduate student in (presumably) one of the natural sciences,
here expands on his interpretation of how scientific cheating might come
about. In many cases, he writes, it is the researcher fooling him/herself.
Some celebrated cases are cited, such as Summerlin (who knew he was cheating),
Baltimore (who probably didn't want to know his postdoc was cheating),
Blondlot (who fooled himself), and Pons and Fleischmann, who also engaged in
wishful thinking, says Frank. He also cites Kepler, echoing other recent
reports that Kepler might have massaged some of Tycho Brahe's numbers; this is
in fact an old chestnut, and a misunderstanding. Kepler did not massage, he
corrected known errors.
Freedman DH; Science 246 (1992), 24-Apr, 438.
"A Japanese claim generates new heat".
** A report of the results of Takahashi, who has caused a stir "even in a
field where eyebrows have become permanently raised". DHF reports that the
claim is for 100 W for months at a time, or up to 40 times the erergy put into
the cells, and more power than is generated in an equal volume of fuel rod in
a nuclear reactor. Takahashi used small sheets of palladium, and a varying
electrolysis current. Neutron emissions were not only very low but inversely
proportional to the heat emissions; this "closes the door" to a nuclear
explanation of this, according to Petrasso, who was asked for comment. But
Takahashi favours an exotic four-body reaction.
Garlaschelli L; Chim. Ind. (Milano) 80 (1989) 1073 (in Italian).
"Fusione raffreddata" (Fusion cooled off).
** Organic chemist LG comments on CNF here. A brief run through the history is
given, then the normal d-d fusion stated, and what the author regards as
F&P's hypothesis that d-d fusion goes the 4He way instead. After ten years,
LG writes, it is an embarrasssment for science, but there remain some working
in the field, also in Italy (Preparata and Gozzi are mentioned, among others).
LG appears skeptical.
Garwin R.L.; Science 285 (27-Aug) (1999) 1357.
"Cold fusion prediction" (Letter)
** Garwin, who has had a hand in assessing cold fusion grants in the past,
reacts to Mallove's Letter in Science 284 (1999) 1929, in which, among other
things, Mallove accuses Garwin of ignoring the evidence for cold fusion.
Garwin points to a bet made by Mallove with Barry Merriman, Mallove
predicting that cold fusion would be widely accepted by July 19, 1996. The
outcome is controversial, both sides claiming victory. Garwin writes that he
would like to see cold fusion a reality, but his calendar now reads 1999, and
he has yet to see any practical devices based on it.
Garwin RL; Science 254 (1991) 1394 (29-Nov).
Book review: "Fire from Ice".
** Garwin reviews Eugene Mallove's book at some length. Garwin makes a hobby
of debunking false claims and has scored in the areas of gravity waves and
polywater. He stresses here that experimental results are of primary
importance, which Mallove also says in defense of cold fusion in the face of
its theoretical rejection. However, the experiments cited by Mallove are
found, on closer examination, to be inconclusive. Garwin writes that cold
fusion may, after all, be an example of pathological science.
Garwin RL; Nature 338 (1989) 529 (News and Views, 20 April)
"Concensus on cold fusion still elusive" (Section editor's title).
** Report of Erice (Italy) meeting, where Fleischmann as well as Jones and
Czirr were present. Garwin correctly pinpoints the problems with the heat
measurements of FPH and the lack of accompanying radiation, and is skeptical.
Glanz J; Science 274 (1996) 718 (1-Nov issue).
"The spell of sonoluminescence".
A review of the field, good description of it and all the theories are named.
These are widely different from each other; in other words, we do not
understand the phenomenon. There are pictures of bubbles expanding and
collapsing again. Future research plans are mentioned.
Goldhaber M; Science 257 (1992) 310 (17-Jul).
"Cold fusion: not nuclear".
** M. Goldhaber comments on an earlier issue of Science, in which one David H.
Friedman asserts that the Hagelstein theory has it that neutrons are absorbed
by the Pd. Goldhaber writes that this can only be the Pd nuclei, and such
absorption would release secondary products such as radioactive Pd isotopes,
beta- and gamma rays, all easily detected. They have not been, and therefore
the process does not occur. In fact, since neither tritium, helium or neutrons
have been found, nuclear explanations of excess heat in cold fusion
electrolyses are not due to nuclear processes.
Goodstein D; Amer. Scholar 63 (4) (1994) 527.
"Pariah Science. Whatever happened to cold fusion?"
** A 'cold fusion' skeptic gives some impressions of the field, and concludes
that cnf has not been treated fairly. Goodstein knows Scaramuzzi personally
and knows that he is above scientific reproach. Nevertheless, Italian
physicists are scathing about his preoccupation with the subject. He also
notes that while excess heat claims are dismissed, the lower-level neutron
claims are considered possible ("good" and "bad" cold fusion).
Gough WC; Fusion Technol. 22 (1992) 188.
Book review: Too Hot to Handle: The Race for Cold Fusion, by F. Close.
** WC Gough finds this book exciting, as a mystery story, and he keeps up this
metaphor throughout the review. The "murder" is the fact of cold fusion. He
comments on scientists' belief system, and its role in the weakening of the
peer review process. G implies that this has worked against cnf research.
Close is criticised as detective for jumping to conclusions. The true culprit,
i.e. the real explanation of cold fusion, has yet to be found, says Gough.
Grad P; Engineers Australia 64(14) (1992) 24-Jul, p.18.
"Cold fusion still controversial".
** Triggered by the upcoming cold fusion conference in Nagoya in October, this
report sums up the field. Grad believes that the conference will be a more
sober affair than the previous conferences, and many participants, he thinks,
will avoid the term "cold fusion" altogether. While Huizenga is quoted against
the phenomenon, Grad writes that too much evidence now points to some real
nuclear effect, and lately experimenters have achieved some degree of
reproducibility, he believes. He quotes a recent statement by Wada, as well as
describing his original experiment, which is shown in a figure. Takahashi is
also quoted, claiming excess heat, neutrons and tritium. Tritium has also been
found by Dr. Will, at 50 times the background, but Will regrets the lack of
solid evidence for excess heat. Hagelstein's theory is mentioned.
Greenberg DS; Nature (London) 346 (1990) 326 (26. July).
"Cold fusion and other matters".
** An interview by Greenberg with the legendary (i.e. mythical) Grant Swinger,
published in The Grant Swinger Papers, 2nd Ed. Science & Government Rept,
6226 Northwest Station, Washington DC 20015: 1990, $8.95. Cold fusion gets a
good mention here. Swinger is impressed with the way money has been obtained
but notes that others do the same thing. E.g. tokamak fusion gets $4E08/a
and - just like cold fusion, but now for 30 years (!) - has not shown a
thing. There are lots of other money eaters with flimsy bases.
Hadfield P; New Scientist 136 (1992) (31-Oct) 10.
"Lukewarm reception for Japanese cold fusion".
** PH reports from Tokyo, having been to several meetings, among them the
Nagoya cold fusion cenference. He mainly reports the new results of Yamaguchi,
who has had some news exposure with his Pd platelet, coated on one side with
Pd oxide, charged from the gas phase with D2 and then coated on the other side
with Au. (4)He then appears after some hours, claims Yamaguchi, who however
detected no neutrons; this is a different kind of fusion. Hadfield refers to
what must be mass spectrometry of emitted particles, quoting a 0.64% mass
difference between D2 and He atoms. Yamaguchi repeated this experiment five
times, successful every time. Critics suspect that the He came from the glass.
Hagelstein PL; Fusion Technol. 26 (4T) (1994), xi.
"In memory of Julian Schwinger".
** One of three dedication pieces on the occasion of the death of Julian
Schwinger, Nobel Prize winning physicist, who before his death strongly
supported 'cold fusion' on theoretical grounds.
Hall N; New Scientist 126 (1990) 25 (no. 1711, 7. April).
"Utah keeps embers of cold fusion aglow". (This Week section).
** Report on the first annual conference held at the National Cold Fusion
Center at the University of Utah. About 200 people attended, 40 gave papers
of positive results. However Petrassi, who was there, said that none of these
show the expected number of nuclear particles, indicating non-nuclear effects.
Nevertheless the Center's director Fritz Will speaks of solid progress,
pointing to excess heat consistently found (10-30%) as well as x-rays from
bombardment of PdD with charged particles. The Salamon et al paper is also
mentioned in the report.
Hamilton DP; Science 255 (1992) 153 (10-Jan).
"A lethal 'cold fusion' blast".
** The first report in this journal of the explosion at the SRI labs. Not much
is known at this point, and there are conflicting accounts: either it occurred
while three people were placing a steel cyclinder, containing the experiment,
on a shelf; or someone attempted to open a jammed valve on a deuterium gas
cylinder.
Hansen LD, Jones SE; Fusion Technol. 30 (1996) 131.
"Response to 'Facts being distorted in cold fusion controversy.'" (Letters)
** The authors of the two papers in J. Phys. Chem. respond to a protest from
Storms (same FT issue, p.130) about distortion of facts. They say Storms is
not correct, and bad calorimetry was done by some workers, and that he fails
to document his claims. They do not agree that cold fusion skeptics should
"keep quiet".
Hansen PG; Nature 361 (1993) 501 (11-Feb).
"A shattered halo".
** This gives a summary of what is known about the (11)Li isotope, anomalously
stable. (10)Li decays instantly but (11)Li does not. Two of the 8 neutrons in
this isotope lie outside the nucleus, and tunnel effects render this
arrangement relatively stable. This has been known for 5 years, and Hansen
gives a description of both old and recent work.
Herbert R; New Scientist 136 (1992) (31-Oct) 45.
Book Reviews: Paperbacks.
** RH briefly reviews the Penguin paperpack edition of Frank Close's book
Too Hot to Handle. He writes "The story caused jaws and work to be dropped",
but reports that it gradually became clear that it [cold fusion] cannot be
done. RH likes the book, and recommends it as a thriller for a plane flight
for some appalled delight.
Hines TM; Skeptical Inquirer 17 (1993) 201.
"Cold fusion and pathological science".
** Psychologist Hines, on sabbatical in a biological institute, reviews the
book "Cold Fusion: The Scientific Fiasco of the Century" by Huizenga, and
finds it by far the best book on the subject. He likes the very detailed cold
fusion history of the first two months, and accepts all Huizenga writes. This
is seen from quote marks around "discovery", and phrases like 'spurious
reports' or 'near religious zeal'. He agrees that this book is a useful
addition to the literature on pathological science.
Hodgkinson N; The Sunday Times (London), 27-Jun-93, page 9.2 ff.
"Nuclear confusion".
** The latest on Fleischmann and Pons in their labs near Nice, where they are
forging ahead with cold fusion. They say that a 10 kW generator could be
ready "within a year". Hodgkinson provides a succinct history of the field up
to the present, and cites several experts, such as Dr. Bewick, a colleague of
Fleischmann, and Frank Close, author of one of several books on this subject,
as well as Prof. Bockris, prominent electrochemist and cold fusion researcher,
and Dr. McKubre, prominent for his cold fusion results, as yet unpublished.
Unavoidably, there is some focus on the controversial nature of cold fusion.
There is full-page photo of F&P, looking through one of their calorimeter
baths.
Hoffman N; Fusion Technol. 30 (1996) 129.
"Author's response to book review." (Letters)
** Hoffman adds some remarks to the book review by Lewenstein (same FT issue,
p.128). There were a few minor errors, such a misspelling, a misinterpretation
of Hoffman's view of Taubes, Joe Champion and Frank Close.
Hoffman N; Fusion Technol. 30 (1996) 131.
"Response to 'Facts being distorted in cold fusion controversy.'" (Letters)
** Hoffman responds to charges by Storms (same FT issue, p.130) of
inaccuracies in the book ""A Dialogue on Chemically Induced Nuclear Effects",
particularly concerning the surface accumulation of elements such as mass 106.
Hoffman has received support for his book from, e.g., Bockris, and now hopes
for a blast from skeptics for his book, to be sure that he fits Storms'
description as "intellectually dishonest".
Holden C; Science 245 (1989) 1192 (Briefings 15 September).
"The selling of cold fusion"
** Two new ventures, capitalising on CNF, have sprung up. One is a weekly
newsletter published by the Fusion Information Center at Utah U; the other
is the Princeton Fusion Report, selling for $647.
Horgan J; Sci. American May 1992, p.17.
"Japan, cold fusion and Lyndon LaRouche".
** Horgan writes that cold fusion is dismissed by the vast majority of
scientists as pathological, but it is receiving support in Japan. Now this
fact is being used to promote US funding; Fleischmann made some veiled hints
to that effect. On paper, it does seem as if there are 100 Japanese
researchers working on cnf but the subject is nevertheless not respectable in
that country. Ikegami's employer, the Nat. Inst. of Fusion Sci., does not
provide funds for it. The surprising claims of Takahashi are unconfirmed by
others. Pons and Fleischmann are sponsored not by Toyota, as some believe, but
by Technova, Inc., a Tokyo-based think tank. Finally, Fleischmann quotes
21st Century as a good source of information. LLR, who own this magazine,
believes that the British Queen heads an international drug cartel.
Huizenga J; C&EN p.3, July 20 (1992).
"Cold fusion".
** John Huizenga's reply to the letter by Cheves Walling in C&EN, 29-Jun. He
writes that far from being exonerated of naive behaviour, Walling and Simons'
paper is even worse, now that Walling has corrected the history. Furthermore,
what they write violates known nuclear physics.
Huizenga JR; Forum Appl. Res. Public Policy 7(4) (1992) 78.
"Cold fusion labeled 'Fiasco of Century'".
** JRH here condenses what he wrote in his book. CNF is an example of bad
science, which cost $50-100 million to be found wanting. But science remains
healthy.
Huizenga JR; Physics Today March 1994 p. 94. Letter.
** Reply of John Huizenga to the Letter by Mallove, disagreeing with Williams'
review of Taubes' book "Bad Science". Huizenga agrees with the book, too, and
writes cnf off as bad science.
Ibison M; J. Sci. Expl. 12(4) (1998) 621.
Book Review: "The Grand Unified Theory of Classical Quantum Mechanics" by
R. Mills, Blacklight Power 1996.
** Ibison, who knows his quantum mechanics, takes a critical look at the
Mills theory as outlined in this book, and finds it inconsistent, shoddy
and wrong.
Ikegami H; Oyo Buturi 60 (1991) 212 (in Japanese).
"Present and future of cold fusion - nuclear products from cold fusion".
** Hot fusion is at a turning point, and FPH's announcement of cold fusion
came at an opportune time. This article discusses magnetic fusion research and
summarises cold fusion results. There is an English-abstract section of this
Japanese-language journal.
Jones D (alias Daedalus); Nature 338 (1989) 529 (Daedalus, 27 April)
"Blow the fuse!"
** Tongue-in-cheek suggestion that, once D is packed into Pd, and surrounded
by explosive charges, this could make a splendid and elegant hydrogen bomb,
with no lasting fallout. Another idea is a fusion-powered watch.
Jones SE; Forum Appl. Res. Public Policy 7(4) (1992) 94.
"Cold fusion: Need to keep door wide open".
** Drawing on his experience of muon catalysed cold fusion, Jones has no
problem accepting the reality of cold fusion. He describes some of his own
involvement, going back to 1985. He appeals for more tolerance by the majority
for this nascent area of physics. Researchers should be encouraged to publish,
so that results can be scrutinised.
Fogle PW; Forum Appl. Res. Public Policy 7(4) (1992) 98.
"Media and science: Differing perspectives".
** The director of Public Relations at the U of Utah looks at some issues in
cold fusion, such as peer review, media coverage, secrecy, the role of law,
patent issues, reporter objectivity and the personal heat engendered by the
field.
Joyce C; New Scientist 128(1741) (1990) 17 (3-Nov).
"Cold fusion pioneer shuns the limelight".
** A report of the current situation, being that both Pons and Fleischmann are
in Europe (in Pons' case, it was not known exactly where), at the time of a
couple of meetings between the Cold Fusion Institute and the cold fusion
advisory committee, which is to assess the case for future funding of the
Institute. The absence of the two men from at least the first meeting (Pons
did eventually attend a second one) caused rumours to fly.
Joyce J; New Scientist 1 July 1989 "This week", p. 34.
"Unlucky break for the friends of cold fusion"
** Among other things, a report of the DOE's advisory board meeting, where
skepticism evidently reigned. Pons was absent but others reported negative
findings. Menlove reported accoustic emissions from Pd and Ti under pressure
of D2, but no neutrons.
Joyce C; New Scientist 126 (1990), no.1721, 16-Jun, p.22.
"Gunfight at the cold fusion corral".
** A summary of the recent troubles at the U of U; i.e. the "anonymous"
donation by the University to the cold fusion institute, and the legal threats
to the Salamon team.
Kenward M; New Scientist 129 (1991) 54 (issue 1759, 16-Mar).
"A close look at fusion"
** Review of Frank Close's book "Too Hot to Handle". Kenward, an energy expert
and former editor of New Scientist, reviews some of the past history of cold
fusion (going back only to Frank, 1947), muon catalysed fusion and the recent
furore over electrolytic cold fusion, which Close's book documents.
Kernan V; New Scientist 19-Apr-97, p.20
"Sharp blow may burst glowing bubble theory".
** Report on the latest theory of sonoluminescence from bubbles. Andrea
Prosperetti of Johns Hopkins U has a theory involving a fast-moving jet going
through the bubble, caused by the sound. The bubble is split, and it is this
that produces the light, in a similar way to fracture emission. Temperatures
go to less than 6000 K, too low for fusion. Lawrence Crum is cited skeptical
of the theory. One might add that the theory does not explain the spectrum of
the emission from the bubbles. The paper is in Acc. Soc. Amer. 101(1997) 2003.
Kestenbaum D; R&D Mag. Apr-97, 51.
"Cold fusion - science or religion?"
** Short history of the subject, focussing mainly on the CETI claims (an
advertisement for their commercial $3750 kit accompanies the piece). The
article also quotes Douglas Morrison, George Miley, Dick Blue, Reding (of
CETI), Barry Merriman, Gary Taubes and McKubre.
Koshland DE Jr; Science 244 (1989) 753 (Editorial, 19 May).
"The confusion profusion"
** Notes that peer review is shown again to be the best way to publishing.
Also, the CNF affair shows that fraud is not easy - results will be checked
by others, as has been the case in CNF.
Landvogt G; Int. J. Hydrogen Energy 28 (2003) 1155.
Book Review "The Grand Unified Theory of Classical Quantum Mechanics".
** Landvogt reviews, somewhat enthusiastically and uncritically, Mills'
2001 edition. *pdf
Lewenstein B; Publ. Underst. Sci. 1 (1992) 132.
Book Review: "Too Hot to Handle: The Story of the Race for Cold Fusion".
** Science sociologist BL reviews Frank Close's book on cold fusion. It comes
in for some criticism. BL classes it as the popularisation of science, which
Close will be pleased to read. BL considers the book timely and clearly
written by a professional but complains of wordiness, repetition and
muddiness, in part the fault of poor editing. The rejection of cold fusion is
perhaps too facile, based largely on FPH; the over 600 articles now public
present much more than this early slim evidence for the phenomenon. A
scholarly analysis of the place of public communication of science in this
affair remains to be done, writes BL.
Lewenstein B; Fusion Technol. 30 (1996) 128.
Book Review: "A dialogue on Chemically Induced Nuclear Effects: A Guide for
the perplexed About Cold Fusion".
** Science sociologist Bruce Lewenstein, who has followed the "cold fusion
affair", writes a review of the title book by Nate Hoffman. He describes the
contents and the unusual form (the same as the Hume-Rothery classic), and
points out a few small flaws (commented on in the same FT issue, p.129, by
Hoffman). BL concludes that the book is useful to those trying to understand
the technical issues of "cold fusion".
Lewenstein B; The Sciences Jul/Aug 1991, 44.
Reviews: "Energy in a Jar"
** An early book review by Bruce Lewenstein, science sociologist, comparing
the two books by Frank Close (Too Hot to Handle) and Eugene Mallove (Fire
From Ice). Lewenstein likes them both and points out that they take opposing
points of view. He finally asks what was unique about the cold fusion story,
and concludes that it is NOT the presence of the press, nor competition
between research teams, nor the intrusion of politics into science, nor
patents, nor the doubtful nature of the phenomenon. What L considers unique
is that cold fusion brought together all of what is known about the social
context of science and is a good example for this.
Lewenstein BV; La Recherche 266 (1994) 636 (June issue) (in French).
"La saga de la fusion froide".
** BL tells the story of cold fusion., up to the end of 1993 or so. There is a
full colour photo of F&P. More interesting, there are publication statistics,
comparing the publication rates in general and specialist outlets with
scientific papers (submission rate and appearance rate) as well as similar
data for items on the Exxon Valdez affair and high temperature
superconductivity. Cold fusion shares with Exxon a sharp initial peak,
followed by low activity with occasional revivals. The article also tabulates
a chronology of the main events in the cold fusion story.
Lewins JD; Nucl. Eng. (Inst. Nucl. Eng.) 30 (1989) 181.
Cited in Chem. Abstr. 113:66464 (1990).
"The fusion trail goes cold".
** "A discussion with no refs on the scientific and political controversy
concerning recent (Fleischmann et al, 1989, Jones et al 1989) and historical
(Paueth [sic] and Peters, 1926) reports of cold fusion.
Lindley D; Forum Appl. Res. Public Policy 7(4) (1992) 104.
"Role of the press in cold fusion saga".
** David Lindley, an editor of the journal Nature, which has distanced itself
from cold fusion, gives an account of the story of the (non-) publication,
and comments on press coverage vs peer review. High temperature
superconductivity is compared with CNF; the former also received press
attention, but proved itself by means of demonstrable results, unlike CNF.
Attention by the press does not put peer review out of action.
Lindley D; Nature (London) 339 (1989) 4 "News" (4 May).
"More than scepticism"
** Report of the late-night meeting of the American Physical Society. Much
scepticism was expressed by Koonin, Lewis and Meyerhof and others. Jones
was present and was politely listened to. Lindley concludes that participants
felt that fusion was dead.
Lindley D; Nature (London) 339 (1989) 84 "News" (11 May).
"Still no certainty"
** Report of the Los Angeles meeting of the Electrochemical Society, with
Fleischmann and Pons present and defending their heat output results, but
retracting other aspects. Lewis criticised their heat results. Huggins
reported consistently greater heat output from heavy water cells compared
with light water cells. Fleischmann denied that some of their light water
cells also produced heat. Steven Jones says that it is vital to detect
radiation as well as heat in order to claim CNF.
Lindley D; Nature (London) 339 (1989) 325 "News" (1 June).
"Cold fusion gathering is incentive to collaboration"
** Report of the Santa Fe meeting, and some research politics.
Lindley D; Nature (London) 339 (1989) 567 "News" (22 June).
"Double blow for cold nuclear fusion"
** Harwell investigation is stopped, after achieving no CNF, and collabora-
tion of Pons and the U. of Utah with Los Alamos breaks down.
Lindley D; Nature (London) 340 (1989) 174 (News 20 July).
"No new money from US government?"
** A panel asked by the US Dept. of Energy to assess CNF (chairmen: Huizenga
and Ramsey) was not convinced by experiments so far. It did grant academic
interest to the phenomenon but will probably not recommend money for it.
Lindley D; Nature (London) 341 (1989) 679 "News" (26 October).
"Noncommittal outcome"
** Report of the meeting "Anomalous effects in deuterated metals" in
Washington, 16-18 October, organised by the National Science Foundation and
the Electric Power Research Institute. The aim was to help the NSF deal
with the flood of grant applications for CNF, not to pass judgement on CNF.
Lindley D; Nature (London) 342 (1989) 106 "News" (9 November).
"No evidence for neutrons at Yale/BYU"
** Steven Jones and Moshe Gai give evidence to the DoE of their joint
experiments, exposing Ti chips to D2 gas. No neutron bursts. Jones, however,
says that the experiment went for 77 hours, and that another lot, jointly
with Menlove at Los Alamos, running for (collectively) 13000 hours, emitted
neutron in bursts at such a rate as to give a 50% chance of detecting a
burst in the 77 hours.
Lindley D; Nature (London) 342 (1989) 215; 16-Nov-1989. News section.
"Official thumbs down"
** The DoE report. Huizenga, one of the committee's co-chairmen is quoted
as being impatient with people still claiming excess heat; none of the
calorimetric measurements were of good enough quality and, in any case,
heat alone proves nothing. This leaves only Kevin Wolf of Texas, who
repeatedly found tritium, whose origin, however, is a mystery since, if it
comes from CNF, it should be accompanied by secondary neutrons and other
radiation; Wolf finds none of these and this argues for a low-energy
origin of the tritium.
Lindley D; Nature (London) 342 (1989) 870 (issue 6252, 21/28 Dec.)
"Sitting on the fence" - Book Review.
** Review of the book by F. David Peat "Cold fusion: The Making of a
Scientific Controversy". Mr Lindley is not happy, Peat has done a rush job
and made some mistakes.
Lindley D; Nature (London) 344 (1990) 375 (29. March).
"The embarrassment of cold fusion". (Commentary).
** An incisive and acid summary of the year's cold fusion. Lindley sums up
the cold fusion affair, taking it apart bit by bit, citing the diminishing
claims of Fleischmann and Pons, the Salamon measurements, Petrasso's
criticism, the anomalies necessitating a new physical process, the
contradictions (did the controls with H2O produce heat, or didn't they?) and
the He apparently found but which should have stayed inside the palladium.
He also throws cold water on virtually all theories that have been advanced
to explain cold fusion; they all appear to make a lot out of tiny effects
or invoke effects that cannot operate under the relevant conditions.
As far as David Lindley (and Nature) is concerned, cold fusion is not only
dead, it never lived.
Lindley D; Nature (London) 345 (1990) 561 (14 June).
"Utah faculty protest cold fusion dealings"
** Report of the controversy at Utah about the legal threats to the Salamon
team and the not-so-anonymous donation of $500000 to the cold fusion
institute. Interestingly, this report now also makes it clear that Nature
rejected FPH's original manuscript, unless it were revised (their lawyer
Gary Triggs attempted to change their minds); an earlier Nature editorial had
stated that the non-appearance of this article in Nature should not be seen
to imply anything about the article's quality.
Lindley D; Nature (London) 345 (1990) 561 (14 June).
"Disappearing tritium"
** Report, without citations, of the withdrawals of the tritium results of
Kevin Wolf of Texas A&M and Storms et al of Los Alamos, and the consequences
to the cold fusion debate.
Lindley D; Nature (London) 346 (1990) 303 (26 Jul).
"Cold fusion. Second round".
** A sneak preview of the second, long-awaited FPH paper - only now there are
more authors (and Hawkins has not been left out) - in J. Electroanal. Chem.,
25 July issue, 1990. Only electrochemistry and calorimetry is mentioned, no
word about emission of nuclear particles or radiation. Evidently the team
still believes they have something.
Maddox J (Editor); Nature (London) 338 (1989) 701 (27 April). Editorial.
"What to say about cold fusion"
** Raises broader issues such as the public image of science, publication,
secrecy, control experiments.
Maddox J (Editor); Nature (London) 340 (1989) 15 (6 July). Editorial.
"End of cold fusion in sight"
** A summary of the CNF affair, concluding that it was all a mistake.
Maddox J; Nature (London) 345 (1990) 652; 21-Jun.
"An apology".
** John Maddox, the editor of Nature apologises to I.M. Klotz and J.J. Katz,
both of the USA, who had submitted what appears to be a sociology of science
paper, in which they compared the cold fusion affair with the alleged
discovery, in the last century, of Acarus crossii. There was an editorial
foul-up, a reviewer ended up with a paper on the Acarus affair and Klotz and
Katz were left high and dry. Maddox apologises.
Malakoff D; Science 285 (1999) 505 (23 July issue).
"DOE to review nuclear grant".
** It seems that Prof. George Miley received a grant of $100000 from the DOE,
approved in May this year. Now the DOE is reconsidering the grant, having
been alerted that the project is cold fusion related. The Office of Science
within the DOE reckons it should have handled the proposal, rather than the
Office of Nuclear Energy. It is felt that the project can damage DOE's
image. The work proposed is the low-energy disposal of radionuclides, using
a setup very similar to that claimed to produce excess heat, in the Ni/
light water systems. Miley, contacted by Science, says that this work is
radically different from cold fusion.
Mallove E.F.; Science 284 (18-Jun) (1999) 1929.
"'New physics' patents" (Letter)
** Mallove (coeditor of the magazine Infinite Energy) joins Valone in a
response to the item by David Voss in an earlier Science issue (21-May,
p. 1252). Voss referred to Infinite Energy as "a publication for cold-fusion
buffs", and Mallove objects to this pejorative language. IE, writes Mallove,
has included articles by Nobelist Schwinger (known for his support of cold
fusion) and physicist Parmenter, who wrote on cold fusion theory with
Nobelist, Lamb, as coauthor, among other distinguished authors.
Mallove E; C&EN 10-Feb-92, p. 2.
"Cold fusion" (Letter to the Editor).
** Eugene Mallove objects to the review of his book, Fire From Ice, by Trevor
Pinch, in a previous issue of C&EN. EM says that Pinch, like Close, do not
understand that the evidence favours cold fusion and points to the journal
Fusion Technology as a source. Only his book tells the true story of how cold
fusion was dismissed arrogantly by the scientific establishment, writes EM.
Mallove G; Physics Today March 1994 p. 93. (Letter).
** Mallove criticises the review by D. Williams of the Taubes book "Bad
Science", in which he agreed with Taubes. Mallove does not, and states that
cnf is alive and growing with many attending the Nagoya conference, 24
laboratories working in Russia, etc.
Marshall E; Science 249 (1990) 14 (6 Jul).
"Science beyond the pale".
** This is a somewhat general article about scientists who - rightly or
wrongly - find themselves at odds with the scientific establishment. The
astronomer Halton Arp is the main example. Wegener gets a mention. Cold
fusion is mentioned in the context of "most screwy ideas just turn out to be
screwy ideas" and Robert Park executive director of the APS complains that
between $50-100 million have been spent disproving this preposterous idea.
Martin FF; Corriere della Sera 17-Mar-92 p.28 (in Italian).
"Pons confirms cold fusion"
** A seminar titled "Cold fusion, three years later" was organised in Torino
this year, and Pons was interviewed there. He confirmed that he and
Fleischmann are working in Nice, financed by the Japanese firm Technova. He
claims that they are using a Pd alloy and with it, obtain 1 kW/cm**3, with
100% reproducibility. He cites the d+d-->(4)He reaction as a possible
explanation and points to Prof. Preparata's theory of superradiance for
support. The object of the work is a prototype of an energy source to be
presented to the public. Prof. Bressani confirms that his group, too, has
positive results and that cold fusion is, without doubt, a real phenomenon.
Martin FF; Corriere della Sera 17-Mar-92 p.28 (in Italian).
"Defamation and denunciation"
(Orig.: "E in attesa piovono diffamazioni e denunce")
** FFM reports the legal defamation charge of the Italian newspaper La
Repubblica which, in Oct and Nov 1991, called cold fusion "scientific fraud"
and then went on to compare a fraudulent scientist with a fornicating priest,
or a pedophile schoolmaster. The scientists named by the paper: Fleischmann,
Pons, Preparata, Bressani and Giudice, are claiming damages of, respectively,
2, 2, 1, 1 and 1 billion lire for defamation.
Massaron M, Lamperti F; Tecnol. Chim. 10 (1990) 98 (in Italian).
Cited in Chem. Abstr. 113:199183 (1990).
"Cold fusion".
** "An introductory with 4 refs. A chronol. summary of the developments is
given with particular emphasis on the expts. of Scaramuzzi at ENEA, Italy. In
these expts., n were counted in D2 after passing it through a column filled
with Ti chips".
Matsumoto T; Fusion Technol. 26 (1994) 1337.
(Letter to the Editor) "Two proposals concerning cold fusion".
** Matsumoto, a frequent author in FT, states that up to now, 'cold fusion'
papers have enjoyed special status in FT, not being reviewed as strictly as
other papers. This status has now been removed by the editor and Matsumoto
agrees. However, now he would like to submit papers on ball lightning, in
which he claims 'cold fusion' takes place, and proposes that such papers
should enjoy that special leniency. His other proposal is to set up an
international bench marking project on nuclear emulsions exposed to 'cold
fusion' environments, and urges interested parties to contact him.
Miles MH; Chem. & Eng. News 69(39) (1991) 4 (30-Sep).
"Cold fusion".
** Miles rebuts Alberts' letter in the same journal, 12-Aug. Miles was one of
the authors of the paper criticised by Alberts. Miles denies the possibility
of an artifact in all reported isoperibolic calorimetry experiments on cold
fusion. Miles writes that there is too much emphasis on possible error,
thereby missing what may prove to be the discovery of the century.
Miles MH; Science 255 (1992) (13-Mar), 1335, Letters.
"Cold fusion: China Lake results".
** A reply to Gary Taubes' earlier piece 'A cold fusion deja vu at Caltech',
ibid 254 (1991) 1582, in which GT mainly focusses on Fleischmann and Pons but
also sums up the state of cold fusion as he sees it. Among other things, GT
claims that the China Lake (4)He results are likely to be due to
contamination. Miles here points out the unlikelihood of this: in 8 out of 8
cells producing excess heat, He was found; in 6 out of 6 cells not producing
excess heat, no He was found. This coincidence is not likely to be due to
chance, having a probablity of 1/16384, writes Miles.
Miley G; Fusion Technol. 26 (4T) (1994), vii.
Editorial.
** The editor of FT here explains this special issue, containing 65 (by my
count) papers delivered at ICCF-4, Maui, 1993. He mentions a review process,
taking more time than expected; thus we can take it that these papers were
reviewed.
Miley G; Fusion Technol. 26 (4T) (1994), viii.
"Dedication to Julian Schwinger".
** One of three dedication pieces on the occasion of the death of Julian
Schwinger, Nobel Prize winning physicist, who before his death strongly
supported 'cold fusion' on theoretical grounds.
Miley G; Fusion Technol. 36 (1999) 245
Book Review: "Nuclear Transmutation: The Reality of Cold Fusion Technology"
by T. Mizuno.
** Fusion Technol. editor and fusion researcher George Miley reviews the
Mizuno book, translated by Rothwell. Miley finds it a fascinating read,
for example the unusually honest description of the progress of Mizuno's
research in the cold fusion field.
Miley G; Fusion Tehcnol. 26T (1994) iii
"Comments".
GM makes some remarks on two rather different papers published in this issue
of FT, i.e. papers about carbon rod arcing. They are thought by some to have
relevance to 'cold fusion', and GM states that because these papers are
bizarre, four referees were used and they were mostly neutral, not finding
any errors. So GM took them, partly because of their provocative nature.
Miley GH; Fusion Technol. 16 (1989) 115.
Editor's response to 'Comments on cold fusion' by Bill Nevins.
** The Editor of Fusion Technology explains that he has several reasons for
opening a cold fusion section in the journal. Among these are the fact that
it is a potentially valuable technique if it can be verified, and the fact
that Miley himself is involved in cold fusion experiments and is personally
convinced that something interesting and real is going on.
Morrison DRO; Nature 366 (1993) 29 (4-Nov).
"The rise and fall of the 17-keV neutrino".
** This Progress Paper reports the interesting story of the 17 keV neutrino,
whose existence has been controversial; it is now considered an artifact.
Morrison here tells the story. At the end, he muses on the difference between
the scientific and legal approaches; with the former, each researcher must
carefully consider all points of view, even those of the critics/opponents. In
the case of this purported neutrino, the approach triumphed. DROM finally
comments that there are always a few who cling to an artifact, and cites cold
fusion as such an area, where some still believe in the phenomenon; in fact,
some hundreds of researchers continue to work in the field, despite the fact
that the scientific community has turned away.
Morrison DRO; Physics World 3(2) (1990) 35.
"The rise and decline of cold fusion".
** A critical status report written in Feb-90. Among other things, it lists
the possible known D-D fusion reactions (which the facts refuse to fit),
gives the "milestones" in a separate box and a critical assessment of all the
important results and claims. The author gives away his leanings by ending
the article with a paragraph on pathological science, clearly putting "cold
fusion" in the same category as n-rays, and pointing out an interesting
correlation between the attitude towards cold fusion and geography - it seems
that this issue, like so many others, it's "us vs. them".
Morrison DRO; Nature 382 (1996) 572 (15 August, Correspondence).
"Damning verdict on cold fusion" (Editor's title).
** DROM responds to the charge laid by Del Guidice and Preparata in a previous
Letter (Nature 381 (1996) 729) that a report in Nature 380 (1996) 367 was
incorrect. Some verbal subtleties in the Italian court, where DROM was the
scientific advisor in the case of Fleischmann et al against the newspaper
La Repubblica (check with the relevant Comment items), so that it is not
entirely true, nor untrue, that the court found against "scientific fraud", as
originally written in the newspaper. The case ended simply with the failure of
the injured parties to win their case, but without any court pronouncement on
cold fusion or fraud, etc. DROM then points out that Pons had, years ago, been
photographed with a thermos-sized cold fusion water heater, but that this has
not materialised. DROM hopes to see this water heater at the next CNF
conference in October 1996 at Sapporo.
Morrison DRO; Physics Today June 1997, p 106 (Letters).
"Schwinger credited with finding anomaly, exploring cold fusion".
** DROM reacts to a Letter by Chubb, Sep-97 in the same journal. He points out
that Chubb seems to have missed Schwinger's two major points on cold fusion:
that it is the dp fusion reaction, not the commonly assumed dd reaction, that
is the likely candidate; and that the excess gamma energy is rapidly shared
by many lattice atoms and thus scaled down to 0.1 eV or plain heat. DROM writes
that the first of the two suggests an experiment in which the ratio of H2O/D2O
is systematically varied (which ahs not been done), and that Schwinger was
wrong on the second count.
Mundell I; Nature 359 (1992) 5 (3-Sep).
"BAAS embraces role of educating public".
** Report of the recent annual meeting of the British Association for the
Advancement of Science. Scientific outliers appear to have been on the agenda,
such as a hominid aquatic past, and a presentation by M. Fleischmann on cold
fusion, followed by a noisy press conference. No questions were asked after
F's lecture, despite the presence of distinguished chemists.
Murbach W; C&EN 9-Mar-1992, p.3
"Cold fusion" (Letter).
** WM comments on the SRI explosion, pointing to an old inorganic chemistry
text (Therald Moeller, 1952), which notes that hydrogen is released
explosively from palladium hydride when the electrolysis current is turned
off. Also, he points out that ignition in hot fusion has not been easy to
achieve, and reckons that this gives an exceedingly small chance to cold
fusion, in principle.
Myers FS; Science 257 (1992) 474 (24-Jul).
"Where there's heat there's yen".
** Another report of MITI's decision to fund some cold fusion research in
Japan. Unlike the one in Nature (Swinbanks), this one is fairly certain that
this will go ahead, "barring last-minute objections by the Japanese Ministry
of Finance". MITI does not subscribe to the reality of cold fusion but is just
being pragmatic in the face of excess heat reports. This report mentions
figures of $1-$3 million, and a consortium of Universities and about 10
leading Japanese utility, electronics and metallurgical companies to do the
work, over a 5-year period.
Nadis S; Nature 393 (1998) (7. May) 7.
"Utah university finally drops out of cold-fusion patent chase".
** Nature reports that UU, having spent a total of about $500,000 on cold
fusion, now is dropping all patent rights on it. After ENECO relinquished its
license last year, UU has found no other takers; Fleischmann and Pons
themselves were not interested either. Mallove is quoted as saying that there
is commercial development going on and Hal Fox says that CNF will be displaced
by "plasma-injected transmutation".
Nevins B; Fusion Technol. 16 (1989) 115.
"Comments on cold fusion".
** "Do you really want to rapidly publish a bunch of 'halfbaked' work on cold
fusion? I expect that Pons and Fleischmann will find the error in their power
balance within the next month or so, and all those authors will be desperately
trying to withdraw their papers".
This was written April 22, 1989... See GH Miley, the Editor's, response.
O'Neill B; New Scientist 137(1859) (1993), 24 (6-Feb).
"Fusion at a pinch".
** Pinch fusion was the first method to realise fusion, writes O'Neill, but
has been superseded since its heyday in the 1950's by the two now major
methods, magnetic and inertial confinement, requiring large and expensive
equipment. These two have disappointed many workers during the decades, and
some are now looking again at pinch fusion, where the plasma is confined by
the magnetic field generated by the current going through the plasma itself.
Technical advances now favour another look at this old technique, and an
experiment is under construction at Imperial College, London.
Oyama N, Hatozaki O; Oyo Buturi 60 (1991) 278 (in Japanese).
"Present and future of cold fusion - nuclear fusion induced by electrochemical
reaction".
** Another wrap-up paper. This one appears to give some background information
on electrochemistry, and summarises cold fusion results such as emissions and
heat observations. The journal has an English-language abstract section.
Passel TO; Fusion Technol. 26 (4T) (1994), xxii.
Preface. Fourth International Conference on Cold Fusion.
** T.O. Passel, of EPRI, who was instrumental in shaping this special issue
of FT, here prefaces it with a few remarks. Like the editor, G. Miley, he
establishes that the papers were reviewed and that many did not make it
through this process, or were not submitted to it. He comments that this
could be a comment on the reviewing process as much as on the papers. There
is a Shakespeare quote.
Picasso LE; Acc. Inoss. 56 (1989) 5 (in Italian).
"Fusione: Fredda o calda?" (Fusion: Cold or hot?)
** General comment, summarising orthodox fusion approaches such as plasma
fusion with magnetic or inertial confinement, muon catalysed fusion, and the
surprising unorthodox chemically induced fusion. Prof. Picasso concludes with
the hope that after the preliminary rush to reproduce and explain the results
of Jones+ and JPH, there will now follow a period of more considered
investigation.
Pinch T; C&EN January 13., 1992, p.28.
"Cold fusion fiasco".
** Trevor Pinch, an associate professor of the sociology of science and
technology, compares the cold fusion books of Frank Close and Eugene Mallove,
respectively "Too Hot to Handle" and "Fire from Ice". He finds them both good
accounts of the story and the technical details, but wanting in the authors'
attitude to how science is done, and considers both authors biased. Close
praises the negative experiments, while Mallove considers lack of evidence as
proof of cold fusion.
Pippard B; Nature (London) 350 (1991) 29 (7 March).
"Footnote to history".
** A purported review of Frank Close's book "Too Hot to Handle". The actual
review takes up less than 20% of the article, and is scanty. Close is
upbraided for being repetitious and at times irritating. The contents of the
book are not discussed. The other 80% of the article gives BP's view of the
cold fusion affair. An interesting point made here is that, despite P&F's
claim to have been working on cold fusion for 5 years up to 1989, there was
very little to show for it. BP does not mention - as does Close - the puzzles
remaining to be explained by skeptics.
Pool R; Science 262 (1993) 1367 (26-Nov).
"Alchemy altercation at Texas A&M"
** "Four years ago it was cold fusion, now it's alchemy" is the opening
sentence in this report of Bockris' involvement with shady characters
purporting to be able to change silver into gold. One Joe Champion apparently
convinced Bockris that he could do it; however, the repeated successes could
not be repeated after Champion left. The man was later goaled, and this casts
bad light on some $200,000 he procured for Bockris, from a gullible investor.
Bockris is then quoted as saying that he is now working on transmutation of
carbon into iron.
Pool R; Science 250 (1990) 754 (9-Nov issue).
"Cold fusion: Only the grin remains"
** "Like the Cheshire Cat, cold fusion has slowly faded away" says Pool, and
the grin is on the faces of the researchers around the world who continue to
find neutrons. Pool has been to the Utah meeting on cold fusion at Brigham
Young, and reports. SE Jones wishes not be associated with FPH. One new result
made public at the meeting was emission of charged particles, perhaps tritium
ions. But Douglas Morrison was not impressed and continues to regard cold
fusion as pathology, says Pool.
Pool R; Science 250 (1990) 1507, Dec. 14.
"Cold fusion at Texas A&M: problems, but no fraud".
** "A 4-month-long internal review of cold fusion research at Texas A&M
University has resulted in a report critical of the way many of the scientists
involved in that research behaved, but it found no direct evidence of
scientific fraud". Carelessness, lack of objectivity, personal frictions, and
unusual treatments of a dissertation (Packham's) were charged. Smiles all
round, as the message appears to be "science takes care of itself", and no
fraud is found.
Pool R; Science 251 (1991) 371 (25-Jan).
"High noon in Utah".
** Pons has to deliver half of his data to Wilford Hansen of the review
committee, by Jan 15, and the rest by Feb 1. If the data is not convincing,
the 20% funding of the CNFI going to Pons, will be cut off.
Pool R; Science 251 (1991) 499 (1-Feb-91).
(No title).
Response to Bockris' response on the same page. Pool points out that the
report of TAM itself states that no tritium has been found there for some
time, and that a review panel found that serious breaches occurred, concerning
Packham's examination.
Pool R; Science 243 (1989) 1661 (Research News, 31 March).
"Fusion breakthrough?"
** A sober report of the FPH and Jones+ results.
Pool R; Science 244 (1989) 27 (Research News, 7 April).
"Fusion followup: confusion abounds"
** The mad scramble to reproduce FPH's results; Bockris invoking unusual
branching ratios to explain the lack of neutrons; some politics.
Pool R; Science 244 (1989) 143 (Research News, 14 April).
"Confirmations heat up cold fusion prospects"
** Heat was generated at Texas A&M; Hungarians find neutrons, too; Walling
of Utah has a possible explanation.
Pool R; Science 244 (1989) 284 (Research News, 21 April).
"Skepticism grows over cold fusion"
** More results coming in, contradictory.
Pool R; Science 244 (1989) 420 (Research News, 28 April).
"How cold fusion happened - twice!"
** "Inside story of how two little-known electrochemists achieved the
breakthrough, or the disappointment, of the decade - and how it may all have
been discovered before". The "before" refers to Tandberg, 1927. Gives some
personal details about Fleischmann and Pons, and also some of the background
for the FPH/Jones+ interaction.
Pool R, Heppenheimer TA; Science 244 (1989) 647 (News & Comment, 12 May).
"Electrochemists fail to heat up cold fusion"
** Report of the meeting of The Electrochemical Society in Los Angeles,
8 May. Strangely, it seems that only people who had positive results to
report, were welcome. Nathan Lewis got in, but had to fight for it. Both
Pons and Fleischmann were there to reiterate their claims, and Huggins
reported 40% greater heat output when using heavy water D2O than with H2O.
Lewis's charge that inadequate mixing in FPH's cells caused hot spots and
thus false heat readings were rebutted by Fleischmann who showed videos of
fast mixing in their cells. See also Kreysa's report in section 5 (unpub-
lished writings) of this bibliography.
Pool R; Science 266 (1994) (16. Dec) 1804.
"Can sound drive fusion in a bubble?"
** Report of recent work on sonoluminescence, where indirect evidence indicates
temperatures between 10^5 and 10^6 K, just 2-3 orders of magnitude below that
required for deuterium fusion to achieve interesting rates. The workers hope
to fine-tune the setup to reach these levels. They take care to distance
themselves from 'cold fusion'; if fusion is achieved here, it will be hot.
Pool R; Science 244 (1989) 774 (Research News 19 May).
"Cold fusion: Bait and switch?"
** Apparently there was a rumor about Fleischmann and Pons's secrecy, to
do with chemical changes in their Pd electrodes, which could possibly
explain their results and in themselves be valuable processes.
Pool R; Science 244 (1989) 1039 (Research News 2 June).
Cold fusion: End of Act I".
** Report of the workshop at Santa Fe in the week before. No concensus was
reached, no changes of mind. There was some feeling that there may be two
different kinds of CNF, one producing heat, the other radiation. Huggins,
having tightened up his controls after Nathan Lewis's criticism, still
finds excess heat, and Appleby and Bockris, of Texas A&M, also have positive
results. However, other results show that electrodes that produced heat at
Texas produced neither radiation, helium or tritium, so a chemical process
seems indicated. Fracture-induced fusion (see Klyuev+ in section 2) was
discussed as an alternative.
Pool R; Science 245 (1989) 256 (Research News 21 July).
"Cold fusion still in state of confusion".
** A Federal (US) Government committee decided not to support CNF, in the
face of widespread skepticism. However, there are still people adhering to
CNF. The State of Utah, however, has granted $5000000 for research on CNF.
Pool R; Science 245 (1989) 1448 (Research News 29 September).
"Brookhaven chemists find new fusion method"
** Not cold fusion, but has some similarities. Deuterated Ti is shot at
with deuterium, causing some fusion. This work started 15 years ago.
Pool R; Science 246 (1989) 206 (News & Comment 13 October).
"Will new evidence support cold fusion?"
** A wrap-up of the CNF scene at present, a week before a workshop to take
place at Washington. Kevin Wolf of Texas A&M is quoted as someone trying to
explain, without invoking CNF, the tritium he finds, but so far without
success.
Pool R; Science 246 (1989) 449 (Research News 27 October).
"Teller, Chu "boost" cold fusion"
** At a 2.5 day workshop in Washington, DC, Teller and Chu advocated more
work on CNF. Appleby, of Texas A&M, suggested that it might be an as yet
unknown neutral particle, that causes CNF.
Pool R; Science 246 (1989) 879.
"Cold fusion: Smoke, little light". (News & Comment, 17 Nov.).
** Report on a meeting, sponsored jointly by the NSF and the Electric
Power Research Institute, where some feathers were ruffled, because funding,
rather than the science of CNF, was concentrated on. Other participants
were happy, however (what else is new?).
Pool R; Science 246 (1989) 1384.
"In hot water over cold fusion". 15 Dec.
** Report on Hagelstein's talk at the annual meeting of the American Society
of Mechanical Engineers in San Francisco, December 1989, which has caused
some controversy and may predujice his achievement of tenure at MIT. He had
also irritated people with what they considered premature release of his
theories on cold fusion, 3 weeks after the FPH paper; however, Pool points
out that Hagelstein has always been very reluctant to talk to the press. His
superiors are worried about his tenacity in holding to his theory of
coherent fusion, perhaps beyond reason. Again, his own statements are more
moderate than his detractors seem to think.
Pool R; Science 248 (1990) 1301 (15 June).
"Wolf: My tritium was an impurity".
** Kevin Wolf, whose evidence for tritium had been one of the hardest to
dismis, has now found that it probably resided in the palladium used in his
group's experiments. This, despite standard precautions to eliminate it by
prolonged heat treatment before the experiments. The item includes a comment
by Wolf on the suspicions of fraud with respect to the tritium results of the
Bockris group in the same complex.
Porile N; J. Chem. Educ. 66 (1989) 932.
"Cold fusion as the subject of a final exam in honors general chemistry".
** Told to prepare for electrochemistry, crystal structure and nuclear
chemistry, students at Purdue University were given an exam with cold
nuclear fusion as the topic, then just become public. The questions were a
thorough going-over of the subject; in fact, many researchers might benefit
by asking themselves just these questions...
Port O, Carey J, Buderi R, Gross N; Business Week 2-Mar-92, p.90.
"Cold fusion isn't dead in the water yet".
** A lively summary of the current status of cold fusion. It focusses in
particular on the theory and experiments of R.T. Bush, and those of A.
Takahashi, both of which are highly controversial. Tom Droege's basement
experiments round off this interesting discussion.
Port O, Carey J, Buderi R, Gross N; Business Week 2-Mar-92, p.90.
"Cold fusion isn't dead in the water yet".
** A lively summary of the current status of cold fusion. It focusses in
particular on the theory and experiments of R.T. Bush, and those of A.
Takahashi, both of which are highly controversial. Tom Droege's basement
experiments round off this interesting discussion.
Powell CS; Scientific American, October 1996, p. 98.
"Chain Reaction" (Review).
Short review of the picture Chain Reaction. The review mentions the "notorious
1989 'discovery' of cold fusion" and that sonoluminescence is invoked and
connected either with fusion or combustion. P concludes that according to
Hollywood mythology (?) "collaboration and peer review are just obstacles to
the triumph of the inquisitive spirit".
Rabinowitz M; Fusion Technol. 26 (4T) (1994), ix.
"In memory of Julian Schwinger".
** One of three dedication pieces on the occasion of the death of Julian
Schwinger, Nobel Prize winning physicist, who before his death strongly
supported 'cold fusion' on theoretical grounds. There is a list at the end, of
JS's 8 papers on 'cold fusion', the last of them being also published in the
same issue of FT.
Reichhardt T; Nature 398 (1999) 98
"US State Department gets cold feet about cold fusion". (News section)
** Reports that a meeting that was to be held at the USSD in April 1999,
on unconventional energy sources, might be cancelled because of doubts by
a newly appointed coordinator of these meetings, Cora Foley, about the
Reichhardt T; Nature 398 (1999) 98 (11 Mar issue).
"US State Department gets cold feet about cold fusion".
** This reports that a meeting planned, which was to have stretched over
several days, and which has received mounting attention, on unconventional
energy sources, might not take place after all. The meeting's title was
"The First International Conference on Free Energy", planned to happen on
29 & 30 April . The Department has recently appointed Cora Foley as the new
coordinator of the Open Forums programme, and she is not keen to see this
conference take place.
Reichhardt T; Nature 404 (2000) (16-Mar issue), 218.
"New form of hydrogen power provokes scepticism".
** Report on the firm Blacklight Power, Inc., recently established, backed by
more than $20 million. The company is based on its founder's, Dr. Randall
Mills, theory and experiments suggesting a new state for hydrogen, that he
calls the hydrino, in which electrons are in orbitals lower that the ground
state. This has been dismissed by orthodox scientists, and now the company
is taking legal action against these sceptics, or at least four of them.
Mills says they are destroying his business.
Rich V; Nature 338 (1989) 529 (News, 20 April)
"Mixed success in East"
** Report of socialist bloc attempts to verify CNF. Hungarians are first
off the mark, with positive findings; Poles are still undecided, Russians
are positive at rather low temperatures.
Romer RH; Am. J. Phys. 60 (1992) 1067.
"Editorial: Cold fusion".
** Romer muses on a course he was giving on energy and entropy to a varied
lot of students, at the time the cold fusion news broke in 1989. He watched
the cold fusion affair and became concerned, and here writes about, the
knowledge scientists acquire on the side, about how to get grants, how they
are decided on, reviewing, pork-barrelling, promotion and tenure, etc. He
regrets that nonscience majors who may end up in responsible positions in
government, and may have taken a general course such as the one Romer gave
(and presumably gives), have no feeling for these peripheral issues.
Romer RH; Am. J. Phys. 60(12) (1992) 1067.
Editorial: "Cold fusion".
** The editor of AM. J. Phys muses on how the process of science is presented
to students. The case of cold fusion reminds him that this process is often
distorted by myth. Physicists were astonished at the way CNF turned into a
circus, while their students couldn't understand the astonishment. Scientists
should learn, as part of their studies, about such peripheral things as grant
getting, peer review and publishing of papers etc; in short, the less
spectacular aspects of doing science.
Ross DK; J. Electroanal. Chem. 347 (1993) 474.
Book Review: "The Science of Cold Fusion". Proceedings of the Second Cold
Fusion Conference, Como, June 29-July 4, 1991.
** DK Ross, from Salford University, UK, reviews these conf. procs. He himself
has done (unpublished) work in cold fusion, and here muses on the pathological
science aspect of the filed - rejecting that label. There is a good summary of
the problems with cold fusion results, and with some of the attempts at an
explanation, such as the invocation of the Moessbauer effect, or Preparata's
theory. Ross notes that chances of funding for cold fusion projects in the UK
are zero. Ross also notes that the claims that cold fusion is a third world
phenomenon are false. He concludes that the evidence is hard to dismiss but
that reproducibility must be achieved.
Rousseau D; American Scientist 80 (1992) (Mar-Apr), 108 (Letters to the Editor).
(no title)
** Response to the polemic response of Czirr et al in this issue of the
journal, p.107, to the earlier article (Jan-Feb 1992, p.54) by Rousseau.
R here thanks Czirr et al for the correction of his chronology of the early
events in the cold fusion affair, and produces a quote which appears to
indicate that the Jones group, at least initially, had energy production in
mind. He points out that both the Jones and FPH groups claimed that they had
detected cold fusion, while many other groups have failed to reproduce it. He
does not wish to stifle nascent field research.
Rousseau DL; American Scientist 80 (1992) (Jan-Feb), 54.
"Case studies in pathological science".
** Polywater, cold fusion and Benveniste's homeopathic paper in Nature are
used here as examples of PS. The author was himself involved in the first of
these three, and its debunking; he found the impurities that caused the
"anomalous" behaviour of water, i.e. traces of sweat. DLR believes that cold
fusion, like the other two cases, is one of self delusion. There is a good
Johnny Hart cartoon.
Scaramuzzi F; Chim. Ind. (Milan) 75(5) (1993) 425 (in Italian).
"Cold fusion four years later".
** Written in 1993, this is a round-up of the 'cold fusion' scene after four
years in the field. The author comments on the two main types of evidence:
excess heat from electrolysis cells and radiation (neutrons) from metal/gas
systems. The problems are mentioned, and the theory of Preparata to account
for the evidence. S concludes that it is difficult today to reject 'cold
fusion' as a real phenomenon, whatever its cause.
Schwinger J; Fusion Technol. 26T (1994) xii.
"Cold fusion theory. A brief history of mine".
Nobel Prize winner physicist Julian Schwinger here expands on his ideas on
'cold fusion' in an address given at ICCF-4 at Maui in 1994. He points out
many of the weaknesses in arguments, pro and con, and provides some interesting
information on his publication failures in the field. He is one of the few to
suggest the p+d reaction, yielding 3He, as the most likely source of the
emissions.
Service RF (with Brant M, NY and Takayama H, Tokyo); Newsweek 9-Aug-93, p. 40.
"Cold, but not dead".
** A quite up-to-date report of the cold fusion affair. Apart from the usual
F&P electrolysis jar, a picture of a boiling cryocell is shown, said to be a
HydroCatalysis experiment (i.e. a Mills & Farrel cell). Petrasso says it is
all systematic error, McKubre reports as much as 50% excess heat, Takahashi
and Storms are quoted. Other names mentioned are Notoya, Bush, Koonin,
Brightsen of Clustron Sciences Corp. Kelvin Lynn of BNL ends with the words
that just a few million dollars might decide whether it is good science or
mistakes. This is in fact being spent by MITI, Japan.
Oriani RA; Science 261 (1993), 16-Jul, p. 279.
"Cold fusion difficulty".
** Oriani here corrects a statement attributed to him by Amato in a piece on
cold fusion in the 14-May issue of Science. Amato had him say that he found
the 1993 paper of F&P in Phys. Lett. A "difficult to assess"; Amato neglected
to say that the difficulty was that Oriani had not had time to study the paper
yet, so the remark was reported out of context.
Shore SN; Skeptical Enquirer 16 (1992) 301.
"Seeking 'resurrection' for cold fusion" - a review of Fire from Ice, Mallove.
** SS, a NASA physicist, here reviews Eugene Mallove's book. He makes his own
position clear by saying that the coffin has been nailed on cold fusion, and
Frank Close has written the definitive book on it, serving as obituary -
almost; Mallove seeks to resurrect it. SN believes Mallove wrote a work of
wishful thinking, rather than one of science or sociology. Mallove's main
point is the large number of positive findings; he quotes 92 groups that have
done so. SN looks at these, and finds that one fifth are comprised of just
four groups (two in Indian, one at Oak Ridge, one at Case Western Reserve) and
that only 19 are from refereed journals, six out of newspaper reports. These
papers vary widely in what they report, and Mallove does not mention the much
larger number of negative findings. He concludes that Mallove's book should be
read, if only to have a record of the believer's case.
Siegel L; The Salt Lake Tribune Mar 21, 1999, p.1 & A7
"A cold fiction"
Reporter Lee Siegel writes about Hal Fox (with photo, in lab), still working
in his lab on cold fusion, while, as Siegel writes, for most it's a cold
fiction. Siegel writes that Fox's lab is one of the last vestiges of cold
fusion in Utah, 10 years after the announcement by Fleischmann and Pons.
Fleischmann is said to be retired in the UK, and Pons to be living on a farm
in France, the French labs being shut down. Mallove is quoted calling
mainstream scientist "crackpots", for not looking at the evidence for CNF.
Srinivasan M; Physics News (Mumbai, India) 27(1) (1996) 48.
""Cold fusion": Promising new source of energy from water".
** Srinivasan, himself a researcher in cold fusion, here gives an overview of
the field in the Indian physics news sheet, aiming at a a nonspecialist
readership.
Stone R; Science 254 (1992) (3-Apr) p.28.
"Propping up cold fusion" (Random Samples section).
** A report of the support EPRI continues to give cold fusion, by financing
McKubre's group. Despite the explosion, which killed one group member and
injured others, the work will go on. EPRI revealed on 19-Mar that more funds
would be given to SRI (where the work is done) but not - as some have claimed
- $12 million. The actual figure will be reviewed from time to time. The
project is titled "Excess heat production in electrolytic experiments
involving palladium as the host metal for deuterium"; the term "cold fusion"
does not appear.
Storms E; Fusion Technol. 30 (1996) 130.
"Facts being distorted in cold fusion controversy." (Letters)
** Storms believes that in the "cold fusion" field, the normal rules of
balance in science are not being followed, and cites some instances, such as
the Jones et al papers in J. Phys. Chem., the book by Hoffman ("Dialogue...")
and Douglas Morrison. Storms concludes that if skeptics wish to contribute
they should explore possibilities, otherwise they should "keep quiet" while
others work out the details.
Storms E; Techology Review May/June 1994, p.20.
"Warming up to cold fusion".
** As the author writes, 5 years have passed and he writes a sort of
summing-up of 'cold fusion', without any references. He covers the field well
and dicusses existing theories, not uncritically.
Stromoski; Omni Oct. 1993, p.126.
Cartoon: Two scientists at the bench are startled by a fairy-like figure with
tutu and sparkles floating in the air behind them, assuring them: "Do not be
afraid . . . I am the cold fusion fairy."
Swartz M; Fusion Technol. 37 (2000) 99.
Meeting Report. Summary of the seventh international conference on cold fusion:
Developing techniques, theories, metallurgy, and elucidation of nuclear ash,
Vancouver, Canada, April 19-24, 1998.
** Dr. Swartz was there and reports. Over 200 scientists were present, and
shared information on the title topics as well as dopants etc. Diversity
in and development of cold fusion systems have continued, with special
progress in light water gas loaded nickel, heavy water/palladium and
accoustically driven systems. Carbon dioxide plays a role, it seems. The
proceedings volume can be bought, and also a video cassette by Kawasaki.
Swinbanks D; Nature 359 (1992) 4 (3-Sep).
"Big increase for MITI budget emphasizes energy technology".
** DS reports the MITI application for funds for 1993. Among other things,
300 million yen was requested for hydrogen energy (cold fusion), for 1993.
This is the smallest of the listed requests, totalling just over 300,000
million.
Swinbanks D; Nature 354 (1991) 98 (14-Nov).
"Cold fusion leaves a legacy".
** It seems that the cold fusion affair has had something to do with the
decision by the Japanese government to agree to finance the building, at the
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Britain, of a muon source. Nagamine, who
heads the Japanese end of this joint proposal, was asked to explain cold
fusion when that affair became public in 1989 and there is a possibility that
this news helped the decision for the muon source experiment. Nagamine says
that this is the only good thing to have come out of cold fusion. Among other
things, the negative muons produced (together with the positive ones) will be
used to investigate muon-catalysed cold fusion.
Swinbanks D; Nature 358 (1992) 268 (23-Jul).
"MITI prepares to fund cold fusion by another name".
** The Japanese organisation MITI has reported to the press its plan to apply
for money for research into cold fusion. The amounts to be asked for are not
known yet, but perhaps hundreds rather than tens of millions of yen (i.e.
about hundreds of thousands of dollars) might be on. However, because most
Japanese scientists do not believe in cold fusion, that term will not be used;
"hydrogen energy" will be substituted. In Japan, as elsewhere, most scientists
consider cold fusion an error.
Swinbanks D; Nature (London) 342 (1989) 606 (News), 7. Dec.
"An old-fashioned love-song"
** Report of the Japanese claim of CNF by K. Nishizawa and N. Wada. Other
Japanese are skeptical, although Y. Arata found very high-intensity neutron
emission, up to 10**6 times the background, using very large electrodes.
Swinbanks D; Nature 367 (1994) 670.
"Is Japan throwing good money after bad science?"
** A comment on a decision in Japan to continue to finance (a) earthquake
prediction and (b) 'cold fusion'. MITI will spend $5.1m in (fiscal) 1994 on
'hydrogen energy', and DS wonders why, given the fact that there has yet to
appear any evidence of 'cold fusion' from that lab, and wonders about the
obvious lack of review of research projects in Japan.
Hoffman NJ; Fusion Technol. 25 (1994) 225.
Book Review: Bad Science; The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion",
by Gary Taubes. Random House, NY 1993.
** Nathan Hoffman, a fusion scientist, and himself writing a book on cold
fusion, here reviews the Taubes book. He regards it as "a combination of soap
opera and mystery", complete with villains. The book, according to Hoffman, is
cynical, and he suggests that the allegations of fraud at Texas A&M (in
Science) were raised by Taubes as advertisement for his book. Hoffman writes
that the book is a collection of embellishments and as a result he now also
doubts the veracity of Taubes' first book "Nobel Dreams".
Szpak S, Mosier PA, Chubb AR; C&EN Dec. 24 (2001).
"Cold fusion" (Letters).
** The authors argue that cold fusion is a fact and is being suppressed by
journals, and ask for this to change.
Taubes G; Science 254 (1991), 1582.
"A cold fusion deja vu at Caltech".
** It seems that Fleischmann was passing through and was roped in for a talk
on cold fusion. Some interesting comments were made. Few of the previously
active cnf critics (like Nathan Lewis, Steven Koonin or Charles Barnes) were
present, and MF got a mild reception. Fleischmann listed only one group (SRI)
as having positive excess heat results, and the Babha Institute in India for
reliable tritium findings. For neutrons, he cited Steven Jones' work in the
Kamiokande neutrino facility, and the China Lake helium results. Fleischmann
still believes in cold fusion.
Taubes G; Science 248 (1990) 1299 (15 June).
"Cold fusion conundrum at Texas A&M".
** Lengthy report of the strange tritium results in Bockris's and others'
labs at Texas A&M. It appears that the suspicion of fraud has been
entertained for some time, judging from the security measures (thought to be)
taken in these labs. Despite these suspicions, and the rather too-good
results, it seems that Bockris was not willing to share the doubts, or do
much to quell them.
Taubes G; Science 249 (1990) 464 (3-Aug). (Letter).
** Referring to the letters of Anderson, Bockris and Worledge in the same
issue, Taubes writes that Bockris was informed prior to publication and asked
for comments, which were incorporated into the article. Among other things,
the article notes that the only other lab reporting tritium is the Bhabha
Centre in India. All other labs mentioned by Bockris have either very small
increments or have not formally reported any results. The spiking experiments
of Storms and Talcott, intended to prove that Bockris's spikes are due to
tritium emitted by a cold fusion reaction, do not in fact prove this.
Tinsley C; Fortean Times no.69 (1993) 23.
"Hot stuff".
** An up to date report of the cold fusion affair, more or less from a
positive point of view, with some doubtful bits. Tinsley concludes that solid
evidence is now in, and we should work on tuning the phenomenon, and that
shares in oil or electricity [sic] are a poor investment now. There is an
inset with hot-off-the-press news of one Roger Stringham, who is reported to
have induced cnf by ultrasound, soon to be formally reported.
Valone T.; Science 284 (18-Jun) (1999) 1929.
"'New physics' patents" (Letter).
** Valone responds to the item by David Voss in Science, 21-May (p.1252),
in which Valone comments on the apparent recent laxness of the Patents Office
in granting what amounts to cold fusion patents. Among other points made by
Valone was one on a conference on Future Energy, variously disavowed by
different bodies, but eventually held. Valone objects to its being called a
conference on cold fusion, claiming that it was in fact one on alternative
energy forms, and only one speaker (Ed Storms) spoke on cold fusion.
Vere-Compton R; Eureka Jul/Aug 1999, p. 8. (Letter to the Editor).
** Responding to an earleir piece in the same journal in December 1998 on
the hydrosonic pump, and the possibility that cold fusion might take place
in that device, VC suggests an experiment that could prove it. A UK professor
is cited as giving support to the idea that ultrasonic bubble caviation
would create high temperatures and pressures. In the US, others have found
what might be up to 10000 C in such bubbles.
Voss D.; Science 284 (21-May) (1999) 1252.
"'New physics' finds a haven at the patent office".
** Following the granting of two patents recently, to Clean Energy, Voss
remarks on this recent lack of rigour in patent examination. Although it
seems that no patents will be given to cold fusion, the company claims this
is not cold fusion, but some other new nuclear physics. Other similarly
questionable patents have been granted, for example to chemical
transmutation, and others, not related to cold fusion. Voss explains this by
poorly educated patent examiners. As well, patent examiner Valone has formed
a company, Integrity Research Institute, and has offered help to get patents
on cold fusion through the process. See reactions to this item by Valone,
Mallove and Garwin, in the same journal.
Waanders FB, Smit JJA; Spectrum (Pretoria) 28(3) (1990) 46 (in Afrikaans).
Cited in Chem. Abstr. 114:12958 (1991).
"Cold nuclear fusion".
** "A review with 4 refs. on the controversy surrounding cold fusion claims of
M. Fleischmann et al (1989)".
Wade N; Nature 364 (1993), 5-Aug, p.497.
"The good, bad and ugly".
** Review of Taubes' book "Bad Science". Wade likes the book, and likes the
wealth of detail it offers of this case study in the sociology of science and
human folly, as well as Taubes' agreeably sardonic style. The book is a
compelling witness to the human mind's irrepressible propensity for
self-delusion.
Walling C; C&EN p.2, June 29 (1992).
"Cold fusion".
** Cheves Walling objects to the way his and Simon's contribution is described
both by Huizenga's book, and its review by Dagani in C&EN. CW writes that it
is not true that they sent their paper, knowing about the helium retraction of
Fleischmann and Pons; rather it was written and sent upon receiving what
looked like experimental (mass spectroscopic) evidence of helium from Pons.
CW has never seen the alleged retraction.
Watson T; Nature 358 (1992), 20-Aug, p. 616.
"Scientists deny alleged support of company's 'new nuclear science'".
** Of the sixteen scientists quoted by the new cold fusion company Clustron
Sciences Corporation, the ten that could be reached denied supporting the
theory of Dr. Brightsen, i.e. the theoretical base of that company. Another
person cited as supporter, Prof. W. Buck, has publicly stated that he does in
fact not support the theory. Of the remaining five, two could not be contacted
and two are not scientists, writes Traci Watson.
Weiss J; Dallas Morning News Wed, Nov. 17, 1993, p. 1A and ff.
"Texas A&M embroiled in questionable alchemy project".
** The whole story of how Bockris was offered $200,000 by financier William
Telander, working with or goaded by Joe Champion, who is now in prison.
Bockris was not unskeptical, but eventually did take the money and allowed
Champion into his lab initially. The piece ends with: "You know, he was the
goose laying the golden eggs", Dr. Bockris said of Mr. Champion. "It wasn't
until December 1992 that I saw, I think this is the right phrase, that the
eggs were cracked".
Williams D; Physics Today January 1993, p.73.
"Proof, process and lessons from cold fusion"; a review of John Huizenga's
"Cold Fusion: The Scientific Fiasco of the Century".
** JW likes Huizenga's straight-forward account of the deliberations of the
investigative committee he was on, to examine the cold fusion claims. He
likes Huizenga's refusal to accept weak evidence. He also muses on his own
observation of theorists who supported the claims soon afterwards, willing -
as Huizenga says - to chain miracles together. Since the book, nothing much
has happened to change the picture.
Williams D; Physics Today March 1994 p. 94. Letter.
** Williams replies to the Letter by Mallove, in which Mallove criticises
Williams for his earlier review of Taubes' book "Bad Science". Williams
disagrees with Mallove's disagreement.
Williams R; C&EN September 6, 1993, p. 4. (Letter)
** Williams, of Princeton, complains that an earlier article in C&EN (June 14)
emphasises the limitless-energy vision of cold fusion, and says that this
misconception explains the bizarre episode. Even if power were generated from
cold fusion, as a free lunch, it would cost much the same for consumers, due
to costs of the plant and distribution. Had the affair initially been
presented as a possible small drop in the cost of power, scientists could have
been saved from the current embarrassment.
Worthy W, Dagani R; C&EN 67 (1989), May, p.5.
"Utah chemists back off from some fusion claims".
** An early retraction by F&P, at the Electrochemical Society meeting in LA,
of some of their earlier claims, i.e. the detection of neutrons and 4He,
explained as instrumental shortcomings. The neutron results as published were
simply wrong, says Fleischmann, and the 4He measurements were based on the
false assumption that the 4He, if formed, would come out of the Pd; the
immobility of He in Pd would prevent this. But F&P stand by their excess heat.
Waldrop MM; Science 244 (1989) 523 (News & Comment 5 May).
"Cold water from Caltech"
** Steve E. Koonin calls Pons and Fleischmann deluded and incompetent.
Weber R; Schweiz. Tech. Z 86(12) (1989) 25 (in German).
"Kernfusion im Wasserglas?"
** Again, an early summary of the FPH affair. Weber notes that, if F or P had
not been well known scientists beforehand, their results would have been
ignored.
Wilner B; Nature (London) 339 (1989) 180 (18 May). "News and Views"
"No new fusion under the sun"
** B. Wilner has the old notes of his father, Torsten Wilner, who worked
with Tandberg from 1925 in the Electrolux Laboratories in Stockholm. They
noted Paneth's work (see Paneth, 1926 and 1927) and ran some of their own
experiments, which were very much like those of FPH and Jones+, involving
electrolysis. Their aim, unlike Paneth's (the production of He) was to
produce energy, and they filed for a patent, which was not granted. They
continued this work for many years, and even set up to measure radiation.
Wilner quotes two scientific papers by his father, written in 1948 and '49
(dealing with bombardment fusion), and a book (Soederberg, section 1) has
a full account of the story (in Swedish).
Worledge DH; Science 249 (1990) 463 (3-Aug).
(Letter).
** Referring to Taubes' "Cold fusion conundrum at Texas A&M" in Science 248
(1990) 1299, Worledge comments on that part of the article mentioning
EPRI's funding of cold fusion rese