There was an elegant understatement to the news release of March 23, 1989:
"Two scientists have successfully created a sustained nuclear fusion reaction at room temperature in a chemistry laboratory at the University of Utah. The breakthrough means the world may someday rely on fusion for a clean, virtually inexhaustible source of energy."Electrochemists B. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann reported they had achieved their extraordinary results in a test-tube reactor about the size of a highball glass.
But Gary Taubes writes in "Bad Science: The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion," that instead of leading to Nobel prizes and billions of dollars, the discovery became one of the most bizarre episodes in scientific history.
The book, published by Random House and set to be on store shelves Monday, portrays cold fusion as an out-of-control fiasco that began with the public announcement at the news conference.
Taubes makes no bones about what he thinks of phenomenon.
"Cold fusion did not exist," he writes. "It never had."
Taubes interviewed more than 260 people between March 27, 1989 and November 1992. Conspicuously absent from the list of sources are Pons and Fleischmann, who refused to talk.
With two or three exceptions, few fare well in the book. But former University of Utah president Chase Peterson and Brigham Young University physicist Steven Jones take especially hard hits.
According to Taubes, Peterson's desire to transform Utah and his university into a major intellectual and economic force deafened him to those who urged caution.
For instance, Taubes said Peterson reneged on an agreement to work with BYU in one of the nastier in a series of political moves that overshadowed the science.
But the move was intuitive, not paranoid, Taubes said.
Jones had received a review copy of the pair's funding proposal a few months before they ended up going public. Taubes reviewed Jones' lab books, which the author said showed Jones resumed research he had long abandoned only after reading the proposal.
"Jones, BYU and the Department of Energy put them in an untenable position," Taubes said in an interview Friday. They had to go public, fast.
Pons is working near Nice, France. He does not have a listed telephone number. Attempts to contact Fleischmann in England also were unsuccessful.
Still, Peterson, who maintained going public was the right thing to do, should have known better, Taubes said. Peterson resigned from the university in June 1991.
"He admitted he couldn't function as a university president any more," Taubes said. "But that's not the same as admitting he made a mistake."
Peterson, a physician at the University of Utah Health Sciences Center, said he would have liked to delay the announcement another 18 months.
Beyond that, "Would I do something differently? No," he said Friday. "We took on a battle more than we could win. But is it wrong to have lost that battle, temporarily? I say no.
Peterson said there is some truth to Taubes' contention that Pons and Fleischmann were forced into action prematurely, but declined to comment on whether he believed Jones acted unethically.
Jones, who continues fusion research at BYU, has flatly denied that he had abandoned cold fusion research only to pick it up again when he read the Pons and Fleischmann proposal.
It wasn't long before the phenomenon made its way from the laboratory to the marble halls of the Utah Capitol. Politicians reacted quickly:
"He that doeth nothing is damned, and I don't want to be damned," former Gov. Norm Bangerter told the state Legislature in a special session in which $5 million of taxpayers' money was put up to fund the research.
Pons balked at the political funding, arguing that he and Fleischmann had enough money from other sources. But lawmakers insisted.
Pons and Fleischmann continue their research under the auspices of Technova, a Japanese company owned by Toyota.
And Utah taxpayers continue to foot the $300,000 annual bill for exclusive rights to cold fusion patents.
"Cold fusion will be with us indefinitely," Taubes said. "Utah will be paying patent attorneys indefinitely. It's flushing money down the toilet."