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An experiment that earned Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann widespread ridicule in 1989 wasn't necessarily bogus
A surprising opportunity to explore something new in chemistry and physics has emerged. In March 1989, electrochemists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, at the University of Utah, announced that they had "established a sustained nuclear fusion reaction" at room temperature. By nearly all accounts, the event was a fiasco. The fundamental reason was that the products of their experiments looked nothing like deuterium-deuterium (D+D) fusion.
In the following weeks, Caltech chemist Nathan Lewis sharply criticized Fleischmann and Pons in a symposium, a press release, a one-man press conference at the American Physical Society meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, and during his oral presentation at the APS meeting. Despite Lewis' prominence in the media spotlight, he never published a peer-reviewed critique of the peer-reviewed Fleischmann-Pons papers, and for good reason. Lewis' critique of the Fleischmann-Pons experiment was based on wrong guesses and assumptions.
Richard Petrasso, a physicist at MIT, took Fleischmann and Pons to task for their claimed gamma-ray peak. Petrasso and the MIT team, after accusing Fleischmann and Pons of fraud in the Boston Herald, later published a sound and well-deserved peer-reviewed critique of what had become multiple versions of the claimed peak.
From this dubious beginning, to the surprise of many people, a new field of nuclear research has emerged: It offers unexplored opportunities for the scientific community. Data show that changes to atomic nuclei, including observed shifts in the abundance of isotopes, can occur without high-energy accelerators or nuclear reactors. For a century, this has been considered impossible. In hindsight, glimpses of the new phenomena were visible 27 years ago.
[...] Hidden in the confusion are many scientific reports, some of them published in respectable peer-reviewed journals, showing a wide variety of experimental evidence, including transmutations of elements. Reports also show that LENRs (Low Energy Nuclear Reactors) can produce local surface temperatures of 4,000-5,000 K and boil metals (palladium, nickel and tungsten) in small numbers of scattered microscopic sites on the surfaces of laboratory devices.
For nearly three decades, researchers in the field have not observed the emission of dangerous radiation. Heavy shielding has not been necessary. The Widom-Larsen theory offers a plausible explanation—localized conversion of gamma radiation to infrared radiation. The implication is that immense technological opportunities may exist if a practical source of energy can be developed from these laboratory curiosities.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 09 2016, @11:54PM
The summary makes out Pons & Fleischmann as the abused victims of the evil establishment, but that is far from the case. The attacks on their experiment was never about the science, it was all about how it was handled and sold. It was a wildly amazing and exciting announcement that was backed up by nothing. There was no peer reviewed paper, there was a fax of a preprint and that was it (I've got a copy of a copy of a copy, etc. of that fax stuck in a box somewhere; I was in grad school for physics at the time). There were no fusion by-products, and there was no reproducibility. Everything that followed went against all scientific protocols and norms. The lab was closed to reviewers. You couldn't see their apparatus. You couldn't see their lab notes. Remember the National Cold Fusion Institute? Probably not. What about the Utah researchers who wrote a paper that reported null results and were threatened with a slander lawsuit by P&F lawyers?
It is a long and sorrid tale based not in science, but in greed and glory seekers. Every reasonable scientist felt that something might be going on, but if it were, it was a very small effect, but if they had to bet, based upon the ugly reaction of P&F and their supporters and their lack of supporting data (some of it comically inept and careless) they probably would go with incompetence over real effect.
However, like many other things, it has survived all these years on the backs of the conspiracy idiots ("We'd totally have all the free energy we would want if it wasn't for BIG OIL"). It isn't worth my time to look up the references, but all those quiet confirming papers mentioned in the article summary, I would bet they are all from the same crowd conducted with the same competency as the "hundreds" (which turned into "dozens", which turned into "that guy") of confirming results announced in the weeks and months after the original P&F press conference. Go look up the conference papers from one of those Low Energy Nuclear Reactor workshops. If it ever did turn out to be some sort of real effect going on, don't fool yourself and think it is some kind of vindication for P&F and that crowd. It would only be a fortunate coincidence.
(Score: 2) by mechanicjay on Saturday December 10 2016, @12:50AM
I did a research paper on this mess for a class in college. The details are fuzzy at this point, but my conclusion to the paper was basically: "These guys were total humps. There is an interesting reaction that they observed that 1) Is absolutely NOT fusion 2) probably warrants some research with fresh eyes now that the initial community outrage has passed"
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 11 2016, @08:50PM
2) probably warrants some research with fresh eyes now that the initial community outrage has passed"
That's why all that outrage was unscientific and got in the way of science.
When people discover something new it should not be surprising if they are wrong about the way it actually works, but it doesn't mean there is nothing new to investigate. There were enough people reproducing some of the stuff to indicate that there was a phenomenon. Whether it was actual fusion, maybe not but there was something.
See also: https://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=223170&cid=18073680 [slashdot.org]