Bad Science: The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion

A science journalist brings to life one of the greatest scientific frauds of our times with the story of the two obscure researchers who claimed to have discovered a clean, no-fuss method for harnessing the energy of a hydrogen bomb. 20,000 first printing.

Science journalist Taubes's chronicle of the cold-fusion episode is an engrossing cautionary tale. In 1989, University of Utah chemist Stanley Pons and his British collaborator Martin Fleischman made headlines worldwide with their announcement that they had created a sustained nuclear fusion reaction at room temperature in a chemistry lab. Their simple device supposedly promised a clean, virtually inexhaustible source of energy. But Taubes ( Nobel Dreams ), who has reported on cold fusion for the New York Times , faults Pons and Fleischman for amateurish, flawed experimental techniques and for offering "virtually no data" to support their claim. Pons is now working for a Japanese company, and Japan's Ministry of Trade and Industry is heavily funding a cold-fusion research program. Taubes considers these latest developments part of an ongoing fiasco--the quasi-scientific pursuit of a nonexistent phenomenon. He steers readers smoothly through the technical details in this scientific detective story.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Remember Stan Pons? Martin Fleischmann? Cheap power from a setup that looked like a freshman chemistry class experiment? Taubes, who plumbed the depths of nuclear-particle competition at CERN (Nobel Dreams, 1987), now continues his expeditions in an epic chronicle that reveals just how corroded and slimy the scientific pipes can get. ``Epic'' because Taubes goes on at too great a length, detailing the day-to-week-to-month chronology of events over a period of close to four years. The saga begins on March 16, 1989, when the University of Utah president felt he could no longer hold the lid on Pons and Fleischmann's work and scheduled a press conference, breaking a promise of cooperation with Brigham Young University, whose own resident fusion guru, Steven Jones, was viewed as a rival who might publish first. The rest, as Taubes tells it, is a horrific tale of claims and counterclaims, of true believers vs. skeptics, and of experiments and apparatus that leave much to be desired (including controls). The escalating war of tempers and temperaments eventually involved scientists, university brass, and local, state, federal, and foreign government officials, all of it well-aired by the press. Interestingly, while the consensus now declares cold fusion to be a myth, and the fallout has left at least one investigator dead and many a career in disarray, the principals are alive and well: Pons lives in Nice, presiding over a Japanese-backed institute; Fleischmann is back in England, appearing with Pons at meetings; Jones continues to investigate phenomena (no longer called ``cold fusion'') at Brigham Young. All of which could be interpreted to mean that if you want to believe it's true...or that you can still fool some of the people.... -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Cold fusion never existed. Even though its "discovery" by two University of Utah chemists--Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischman--was proclaimed with fanfare in 1989, the idea has been thoroughly discredited. As Taubes demonstrates in this well-documented account, cold fusion was "bad science" from the outset. The researchers rushed to announce their discovery to ensure primacy and, by circumventing peer review, introduced political and economic pressures into the scientific process. Taubes interviewed many of the key players in the controversy (although Pons and Fleischman refused his requests) and thus gives an insider's view of what happened--and why. Eugene Mallove's Fire from Ice ( LJ 6/1/91) also critically appraises cold fusion, but Taubes's work is more comprehensive and also less strident. This cautionary tale puts cold fusion to rest and, more important, shows how science can be mishandled. Recommended for public and academic libraries.
- Gregg Sapp, Montana State Univ. Libs., Bo z eman
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.