Sun in a Bottle - Charles Seife [87]
Happer’s note was longer and more involved, but he, too, urged Kennedy not to hype the results, likening it to cold fusion and polywater:70
I am told that the paper in question, the most recent version of which has the title “Evidence for Nuclear Emissions During Acoustic Cavitation,” will have a place on the cover of “Science” when it is published, and will be accompanied by additional laudatory editorials and sidebars. I may well be misinformed about this, but if I am not, I hope I can persuade you to exercise your authority as Editor in Chief to stop these plans....
Giving the Taleyarkhan paper lots of publicity in “Science” would damage the credibility of the magazine and would do quite a bit of harm to our scientific community. I have seen several examples of similar episodes in my career, for example, polywater and cold fusion. Both episodes caused lasting damage to science.
Happer strongly argued that the Taleyarkhan paper was in error, and said that several other prominent fusion researchers (including the laser fusion scientist John Nuckolls) had concluded that Taleyarkhan was flat-out wrong. But at the same time, Happer insisted that he wasn’t trying to block publication. “I like Science; I’m a member of AAAS,71 and I don’t want them to shoot themselves in the foot—or some other body part,” Happer told me. “All I told him was, for God’s sake don’t put it on the cover of Science.” Garwin was a little more oblique about what Science should do with the bubble fusion manuscript. “It would be unfortunate if Science magazine were to take any position on its correctness,” he said.
There’s no question in my mind that Happer and Garwin would have been happy if Science had pulled the Taleyarkhan paper. They were convinced (as I was becoming) that bubble fusion was a fiction. However, I think that by the time they contacted Kennedy, they knew that Science was likely to publish the paper. They just wanted to minimize the damage to Oak Ridge and to the journal and, above all, to science. Don’t hype the results. Don’t put it on the cover. Don’t go out on a limb for bubble fusion.
Kennedy, not unreasonably, interpreted the notes slightly differently. He saw it as a last-ditch attempt by Oak Ridge to quash publication. His response to Happer was measured, if indignant. Science editors had taken exceptional care with the manuscript, he insisted, and the review process had led to a firm recommendation to publish:
Concern on the part of research managers from ORNL appeared late in the game, followed by some secondary measurements taken with a different detector which are claimed to show differences with respect to some of the results. That work has not been peer-reviewed. . . .
I am now hearing from you and a few other distinguished physicists arguing that I should now block publication of a paper that has met and passed all our tests. Because I believe that the right way to resolve serious scientific differences is through repetition, peer review, and publication I plan to proceed. I have told the ORNL management that we will be happy to consider a manuscript by those who have a different interpretation.
It was getting more complicated by the minute, but now that the Taleyarkhan paper was circulating around the physics community, I was freed from the high level of secrecy that had hampered my investigations. I made dozens of phone calls to scientists around the country, asking not only about bubble fusion but also about what had happened with the review process at Oak Ridge. I knew about Shapira and Saltmarsh, so I contacted them. I also spoke to one of Oak Ridge’s deputy directors, Lee Riedinger.
I was pretty sure Riedinger thought bubble fusion was garbage—but he never said so directly. “I’m confused,” he told me, when I asked him whether he believed the Taleyarkhan experiment or the Shapira-Saltmarsh one. “There’s an active dialogue back and forth about what could be wrong with either set of measurements.” Riedinger