The story of cold fusion research is a sad one, blemished by vicious, unremitting attacks, a waste of money, disappointments and even a death.
One of the first casualties in the battles over the astonishing claims was then-University President Dr. Chase N. Peterson, an early booster of cold fusion.In 1989, Peterson helped talk the Legislature into providing $5 million so the U. could pursue cold fusion research and patents.
But in 1990, he announced he would resign the presidency. It was partly because of a furor over his contributing $500,000 in discretionary research funds as an "anonymous donation" to cold fusion. This was attributed to Peterson's trying to prime the pump for other contributions.
As the U. tried to prove it really had discovered room-temperature fusion, laboratories around the world -- including in Ivy League schools and Japanese institutions -- joined the race.
In 1992, a scientist was killed and three others were injured in a lab explosion during a cold fusion experiment in Menlo Park, Calif. The blast was blamed on chemical, not nuclear, reactions.
Some experimenters reported nuclear byproducts or excess heat, then took a second look and backed away from the claims. But others became dogged champions of the process.
Many experts savaged Pons and Fleischmann in a brutal scientific bloodletting. The more charitable said the two had made mistakes in making the difficult calculations that compared energy input vs. output.
The U. declined to renew Pons' and Fleischmann's contracts. They went to the vicinity of Nice, France, where they worked on a cold fusion project backed by Japanese interests. But in 1997, after five years and a $20 million investment, Japan dropped the effort.
Pons continues to live in France, said an acquaintance, while Fleischmann has retired to Tilsbury, England. Fleischmann said Pons has dropped out of view and doesn't want to talk about cold fusion.
In 1993, for an undisclosed sum, the U. sold its rights to seek patents to a Research Park company called ENECO. Four years later, citing prohibitive costs in the patent search, ENECO abandoned its effort and returned the rights to the U. In 1998 the university announced it would no longer pursue patents.
Today, nearly all of the worldwide scientific establishment scoffs at the cold fusion claims.