The announcement by Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann that they had achieved fusion in a test tube at the University of Utah on March 23, 1989 “launched the equivalent of a scientific gold rush.” (Pinch, 1994). Soon after, researchers from Georgia Tech, Texas A&M, Brigham Young University, and scientists around the world were announcing positive results. I became curious as to how all of these labs around the world were suddenly able to perform something that was previously known to be impossible. Was it just motivated reasoning that forced them to see positive results so quickly or was there actual foul play? After researching the laboratories mentioned above who claimed to have achieved fusion, I found that the most profound and controversial case came from the lab of Dr. Bockris at Texas A&M. Not only did the researchers at this lab produce the most compelling evidence of fusion to date, they were also accused of having tainted results and were eventually investigated for fraud. The following video details the work done in the lab of Dr. Bockris and by Pons and Fleischmann.
In an article in the magazine, Science, the “first public suggestion that fraud may have tainted some of the dramatic results,” in the field of cold fusion was put forth against Dr. Bockris and his team (William J. Broad, New York Times, 1990). Bockris had recently reported finding large amounts of tritium, a key fusion by-product, in his cold fusion experiments. This was the most compelling evidence of cold fusion to date and had even been one of the most influential factors in receiving the five million dollar grant from the Utah State Legislature for cold fusion research. However, even as these results were being published, members of the Texas A&M research team were reporting that the results were “very suspicious,” and that there was a “very good chance” the findings were tainted by fraud (Gary Taubes, Science. 1990). Despite these reports, no investigation was conducted until several months later. Apparently, Texas A&M refused to conduct an investigation without a formal complaint from a staff member, and no staff member wanted to say for sure that they believed the results were tainted. One member of the Texas A&M staff commented that the school’s response to the concerns was “limited at best.” The article in Science called the episode a “case study in the damage done when questions of fraud, legitimately raised, are not seriously addressed.”
There were several questions raised in the Science article which led to the accusation of possible fraud. For one, Bockris reported one trillion tritium atoms in each milliliter sample but no other by-products of nuclear fusion. This caused many critics to wonder if the scientists were simply adding the tritium on their own. One scientist even asked Bockris, “Look, concerning this tritium - are you sure that somebody hasn’t been spiking your cells?” The best defense that Bockris could come up with was that there was already a “stream of people” who had “verified the work.” According to Bockris, he was “simply the first.” However, of the list of labs that Bockris named (see below) only Iyengar had claimed to see tritium at levels anywhere near those of the Texas A&M lab.
Packham et al., TAMU [Texas A&M]
Wolf et al., TAMU
Iyengar, Bhabha Atomic Research
Storms and Talcott, Los Alamos
Menlove et al., Los Alamos
Yeager and Adzic, Case Western
Ramirez, Institute of Petroleum, Mexico
Scott (C.D.), Oak Ridge
Schoessow and Wethington, Gainesville
Guruswamy, Utah.
Another concern in the experiments conducted by Bockris was that his lab setup was rushed and used only materials that were readily available. According to one member of the group, Nigel Packham, the calorimetric setup was “primitive as hell.” Eventually, in November of that year, the research group and results were investigated by an internal panel of three Texas A&M professors. They concluded that Bockris “might have acted hastily but had not done severely substandard work.” (New York Times, 1990). The investigators believed that spiking was unlikely, in part because they got different results than Bockris when testing the theory by intentionally adding tritium in water. They reported that spiking of the experiment was “much less probable than inadvertent contamination or other unexplained factors in the measurements.” The investigators concluded by saying that the researchers at Texas A&M had failed to confirm Pons and Fleischmann’s results and questioned whether Pons and Fleischmann had even achieved cold fusion.
The question of how the Texas A&M lab was able to achieve cold fusion so soon after Pons and Fleischmann has been answered. The truth is that nobody achieved cold fusion. The question now is ‘why did so many labs claim to have been successful?’ One of the most important comments the investigators of the Texas A&M lab made was that the “furor” over the other results of cold fusion was what caused the Texas A&M scientists to “rush their research and lose scientific objectivity.” This caused them to construct a “less than perfect experimental design” and obtain results that were most likely caused by contamination. The dramatic results seen by the lab of Dr. Bockris and by many other labs around the world during the cold fusion controversy were all affected by motivated reasoning. Obviously, achieving cold fusion would have solved many problems in society, especially dealing with energy needs, and scientists around the world wanted to be the first to discover a new technology to effectively end any worry about an energy shortage. Therefore, when one set of researchers claimed to have accomplished cold fusion and the idea that it was possible came about, many other scientists believed they could do it too. The idea of coming up with such a world-changing new way to obtain energy caused many scientists to look past “scientific objectivity” and to believe in whatever seemingly positive results they obtained. The societal implications of achieving cold fusion would obviously have been incredible. Energy would no longer be a concern, and even issues with the environment would have been improved as petroleum would no longer be the main energy source.
Another course concept that comes into play here is the cycle of mistrust. In this case, scientists around the world were pumping out “results” they believed would please the public. However, when the public began to become more disillusioned by all of the negative results that were surfacing, many began to distrust the researchers. A perfect example of this is the Texas A&M case. Once the results began being questioned, and other researchers started to come forth with their opinions, the article in Science printed an outright accusation of fraud. This led to outrage at the policies at Texas A&M which eventually led to an investigation of the findings. One scientist, Douglas Morrison, compared the findings at Texas A&M to a famous speech by Irving Langmuir on “pathological science.” This is the kind of science that is very popular in society because of its controversy and capability of solving many world problems but that later turns out to be “dismissed as a product of mass delusion.” Morrison called the cold fusion results “the most recent case of pathological science.” This has many societal implications. People band together to hope for certain results which scientists feel pressured to deliver. This seems to be what happened in the case at Texas A&M. In the future, it is important for scientists to remember that falsifying results to please the public will only cause more distrust in the end, and at the same time, society must remember that scientists can only achieve the possible.
Resources:
1. "Cold Fusion and the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge." Trevor Pinch. 1994
2. "Texas Panel Finds No Fraud in Cold Fusion Case." New York Times. 1990.
3. "Cold Fusion Conundrum at Texas A&M." Gary Taubes. Science. 1990.
4. "Fraud in 'Cold' Fusion Lab is a Concern, Magazine Says." William J. Broad. New York Times. 1990.
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