MIT and Cold Fusion: A Special Report - Infinite Energy Magazine

William Broad’s 1991 front-page news story in the March 17, 1991 Sunday
New York Times, senior PFC physicist Richard Petrasso revealed
his original views about Pons and Fleischmann: “I was convinced
for a while it was absolute fraud. Now I’ve softened.
They probably believed in what they were doing. But how they
represented it was a clear violation of how science should be
done.” This is final proof, as though more were needed, that the
scientific experiments to investigate cold fusion were inappropriately
biased from the outset.
Petrasso’s comments
came within Broad’s article,
bannered with “Cold-
Fusion Claim is Faulted
On Ethics as Well as Science.”
The article amounted
to a virtual promotional
book review of UK physicist
Frank Close’s book,
Too Hot to Handle, which
came out at about the time
of Fire from Ice. The New
York Times also reviewed
Close’s book in its Book
Review section. Curiously,
Fire from Ice was never reviewed by the Times. Frank Close, who
worked closely with Petrasso et al. in assaulting Pons and Fleischmann,
falsely accused them of having
fudged gamma-ray spectroscopy data. The
bizarre truth is that even had Pons and
Fleischmann faked gamma ray data—they
most certainly had not—their all-important
nuclear-scale excess power results, the key
signature of cold fusion, has withstood the
test of time. Cold fusion is now being developed
commercially. To their credit, Fleischmann
and Pons were not comfortable
with the preliminary nature of their neutron/gamma-ray
data and have long since
withdrawn those data. Others subsequently confirmed much
lower levels of neutron emission. On the other hand, the use of
the strawman of gamma-ray curves by Petrasso et al. at the MIT
PFC is all the more reprehensible when the history of real data
fudging in cold fusion is examined—the data “processing” (i.e.
improper manipulation) of calorimetry curves from electrochemical
experiments performed at the MIT PFC in the spring of 1989.
Let us not forget, these were serious experiments, funded by
the U.S. Department of Energy under Federal contract. The
authorization to investigate came from U.S. President George
Bush through Energy Secretary Admiral Watkins. (As a general
matter, people who file false reports to Federal agencies are subject
to criminal sanctions if this work is brought to the attention
of appropriate investigative authorities before the statutes of limitation
expire.) This calorimetry issue was not a small matter. In
the spring of 1989 it was absolutely critical to determine whether
there was anything to the Pons and Fleischmann claims. The
energy and environmental future of the world hung in the balance—and
the MIT PFC people failed us. They preferred to get
rid of a scientific claim in which they did not believe, and which
threatened their federally-funded program, by playing politics
with the media, trivializing their experiments, and ultimately
foisting on the world highly flawed data—some would say
fraudulently represented data—from a calorimetry experiment
ostensibly performed to determine scientific truth.
To understand how the curves that I and later Dr. Swartz analyzed
in his report came about, one should have some background.
In late April 1989, Professor Parker and Professor
Ronald Ballinger, both members of the PFC team then investigating
the claims of Pons and Fleischmann, held a covert interview
with Herald reporter Nick Tate to plant a very negative
story against the Utah work. No one at the MIT News Office was
told of this interview until late on the night before the story was
to appear in banner headlines in the Boston Herald. As Parker
told Tate (a tape released by the Herald confirms this—see Exhibit
B), Parker and Ballinger et
al. were opposed to the
“cheer-leading” for cold
fusion by the Boston Globe.
They wanted to give Tate an
exclusive story about some
nuclear physics evidence
that they said they had
developed, which they
claimed would prove the
Fleischmann-Pons experiments
to be highly flawed.
This evidence concerned
the gamma-ray spectra
coming from attempts to
measure neutrons impinging on a water bath near the Pons-
Fleischmann cells.
Historically, it is evident that this Herald story helped unleash
the tidal wave of negativity against Fleischmann and Pons and
others who continue to work in the field. Ironically, Parker et al.
accomplished what they really set out to do with that story, but
at the time Parker attacked reporter Tate for allegedly mis-reporting
what he had said during his interview. Tate came very close
to being fired on the spot by his editor; he would have been fired
had he not had an audio tape of the interview to confirm what
he had been told by Parker. After all, it was an MIT professor’s
word against that of a young reporter.
A frantic Ronald Parker, perhaps fearing that he would be
sued by Pons and Fleischmann for the harsh words that were
quoted a bit too explicitly for his taste, called me late on the
night of April 30, 1989. He had me dispatch a press release to the
wire services denying the impending Boston Herald story, the exact
nature of which he had learned from a call from CBS television. Of
course, I had at that time no reason to doubt what he was telling
The energy and environmental future of the world hung in
the balance—and the MIT PFC people failed us. They preferred
to get rid of a scientific claim in which they did not
believe, and which threatened their federally-funded program,
by playing politics with the media, trivializing their
experiments, and ultimately foisting on the world highly
flawed data—some would say fraudulently represented
data—from a calorimetry experiment ostensibly
performed to determine scientific truth. . .
Prof. Ronald R. Parker, at hastily called MIT press conference on May 1,
1989, explains what the MIT PFC team believed to be the errors in the
Fleischmann-Pons neutron measurements. He also denied using the
harsh language against Fleischmann and Pons quoted in the Boston
Herald story that day.
Photo: MIT News Office
13 Infinite Energy • ISSUE 24, 1999 • MIT Special Report