Sun in a Bottle - Charles Seife [93]
The technology, in theory, could lead to a new source of clean energy and a host of portable detectors and other applications. . . .
Xu and Butt now work in Taleyarkhan’s lab, but all of the research on which the new paper is based was conducted before they joined the lab, and the research began at Purdue before Taleyarkhan had become a Purdue faculty member. The two researchers used an identical “carbon copy” of the original test chamber designed by Taleyarkhan, and they worked under the sponsorship and direction of Lefteri Tsoukalas, head of the School of Nuclear Engineering.
Taleyarkhan saw this as a great achievement, and in 2006 he wrote about how his results had been “independently confirmed.” This claim, too, was about to be challenged.
In 2005, I resigned from Science magazine to become a professor of journalism at New York University. So when the bubble fusion affair exploded again, I was watching from the sidelines. It was a much more comfortable position.
The bubble fusion affair began very differently from the cold-fusion fiasco. Unlike Pons and Fleischmann, Taleyarkhan and his team had not sought publicity until their research had been peer-reviewed by a major journal. Once Science stamped its imprimatur on the work, then the group could claim they were doing the right thing, at least according to the traditions of science—they were steering debate about the work into the scientific literature. Of course, there were questions about their competence as well as their conduct. For example, why hadn’t they withdrawn their paper after the devastating counterexperiment by Shapira and Saltmarsh?
I suspect they felt that Oak Ridge was trying to undermine their work and rob them of a publication in a prestigious journal. They were unconvinced (and perhaps uncomprehending) of the importance of the Shapira-Saltmarsh paper. The embattled bubble fusion scientists began to get paranoid, too. When the story first broke, Taleyarkhan’s coauthor (and PhD thesis adviser), Richard Lahey, told the Washington Post that criticism of the paper was “political” and motivated by hot-fusion physicists who were trying to hold on to their big budgets. Throw on top of that their desire to patent the device and profit from it, and I doubt they ever seriously considered withdrawing the paper. In my opinion, not withdrawing, even despite the Shapira and Saltmarsh counterevidence, did not cross the line into scientific misconduct, though some anti-bubble-fusion scientists seemed to believe otherwise.
With bubble fusion, there were no moving peaks, no firm accusations of scientific fraud—at least at first. As time passed, though, the story of bubble fusion did begin to mirror the cold-fusion fiasco ever more closely. An embattled Taleyarkhan would soon find himself under investigation and accused of fraud.
The story began to stir again in 2005, in part because of a BBC science documentary. BBC’s science show, Horizon, interviewed Taleyarkhan and commissioned Seth Putterman to redo the Taleyarkhan experiment on TV. The results were completely negative. How many neutrons had Putterman seen coming from a bubble fusion cell? None at all. When the program, entitled “An Experiment to Save the World,” aired, Taleyarkhan looked foolish—even talking about his hopes for a Nobel. “Nuclear fusion is a major finding, some people think that it may be worthy of a Nobel Prize,” he said on the show. “It would be nice if it were. But I don’t, I don’t keep dreaming about it just now, if it happens so be it.” Apparently, as filming progressed, Taleyarkhan got increasingly suspicious, and he refused to help the Putterman team with the experiment.
DR RUSI TALEYARKHAN: I would help out anybody who I feel, who I felt comfortable with. I would, I would, but I have to be comfortable with that particular group.
INTERVIEWER: Why, why is that, because is it not just science?
DR RUSI TALEYARKHAN: I will