Natural Science Forum / Physics / Fusion / July 2004

Science in neglect: Nobel laureate speaks out for cold fusion"

Written by Haiko Lietz, July 8th, 2004

For over 50 years the annual meetings http://www.lindau-Nobel.de/ in
Lindau, Germany, offer students and Nobel laureates the opportunity
for interdisciplinary discussion and exchange. This year, Professor
Brian Josephson, who had received his Nobel prize in 1973 for the
discovery of a superconducting electronic switch, spoke
http://www.lindau-nobel.de/images/ock/media/downloads/Media_1703187544.htm
about rejection of real empirical phenomena by the scientific
community. By saying that cold fusion appeared to be real, and the
modern equivalent to continental drift, the theoretical physicist
stirred a controversial but rather open-minded debate.

In 1912, Alfred Wegener proposed the theory of continental drift which
says that all continents once began as a single landmass in primitive
times and subsequently drifted apart. Despite the way the south
American and African coast lines fit together and the agreement of
fossils and rocks on matching places of the two continents, Wegener's
theory was dismissed. The argument was, it was simply impossible since
rocks couldn't move at that rate. It was not until the 40s that
continental drift prevailed. This shows, according to the Nobel
laureate, "how easily the scientific community can dismiss an idea
despite extremely strong evidence". Josephson sees the argument, "that
no mechanism is known," being echoed today against cold fusion.

Back in 1989 chemistry professors Pons and Fleischmann claimed having
reached nuclear fusion at room temperature. An advisory board to the
United States Department of Energy was mandated to clarify the claims
that – if real – could contribute to the solution of the energy
problem in a revolutionary way. Professor Josephson now accuses the
department of having swept the discovery under the rug. Once again the
argument http://www.ncas.org/erab/sec5.htm was that cold fusion "would
be contrary to all understanding" and "would require the invention of
an entirely new nuclear process." The physicist regards this as
untenable argumentation: "Sometimes it does happen in science that
discoveries are made contrary to previous understanding, like
superconductivity." As regards reproducibility, Josephson cited Steven
Krivit's survey http://www.newenergytimes.com/Reports/ColdFusionReproducibility.htm
that the average reproducibility of cold fusion experiments had
advanced from 45 to 83 percent in the last five years. The reason the
scientific community today doesn't know about this, was that cold
fusion was being blocked from the prominent broad-audience science
journals.

In fact there are numerous cases of rejections
http://blake.montclair.edu/~kowalskil/cf/88rejections.html of cold
fusion papers. Three months ago the US Department of Energy pledged
http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-57/iss-4/p27.html to review the
experimental data that has come up since 1989. The Nobel laureate
thinks that, if they are honest, they could presumably only come to
the conclusion, that it's a real phenomenon: "I think it'll be
difficult to come to any another conclusion at this point as long as
they actually look at the work that's being done." If the DoE will use
the argument that "if an experiment claims success then there must be
something wrong with it," Josephson would hope "that that argument be
rejected."

The German ministry of research estimates that cold fusion – if real –
would be an "big step towards a worldwide sustainable energy supply".
The review of the American colleagues is therefore being expected with
great interest. Should there be any evidence that cold fusion were
indeed real Berlin would again deal with this question.

Dipl.-Ing.
Haiko Lietz
Science Reporter, Germany
Phone: +49 2207 910 213
Fax: +49 1805 39160 25215
hl@haikolietz.de

http://www.newenergytimes.com/news/Science-In-Neglect-Josephson-Lietz.htm