Cold fusion has certainly taken its lumps since the announcement by University of Utah President Chase Peterson that two U. of U. researchers had achieved the scientific feat.
This week's disclosure that $500,000 listed by the school's National Cold Fusion Institute as an anonymous, outside donation actually came from another university-related research institute doesn't help matters.It may, as university and institute officials are saying, have been only a misunderstanding or an unintentional blunder, a miscommunication between administrators. But it still is undeniably a public relations problem and, once again, puts the administration of both the university and the cold fusion institute out on a limb, making them easy targets for potshots by their critics.
And there is no shortage of critics, both from within the university and from outside academic and scientific communities.
The problem has been compounded by the fact that members of the state-appointed Fusion/Energy Advisory Council also were misled by the donation, thinking that efforts to interest outside investors or private industry in cold fusion were bearing fruit. The council oversees how $5 million in state funds appropriated for fusion research is spent.
This unhappy episode does not constitute a hanging offense. But with the drumbeat of criticism that has surrounded the cold fusion institute's every move, it doesn't need to shoot itself in the foot.
If the fusion institute and the university want to keep public support for continued funding of its research, their administrators have to not only coordinate more closely with each other, but also with the advisory council that controls the funding.