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

Other Issues
The preceding is the basic story of what went on at MIT in
1989-1992. Much of this could have been avoided if President
Vest had had an open-door policy toward appropriate scientific
dissent. On April 12, 1991, I had sent a letter to President Vest
(see Exhibit I), at a time when I was feeling optimistic about
what could be accomplished. I had hoped that the new MIT
President, who had replaced the outgoing Dr. Paul E. Gray,
would take action on its important message. I recommended
that a study group be formed to re-examine what had been
learned about cold fusion since 1989. Should I have been surprised
at not receiving a response? Not when President Vest
had chosen Chemistry Department head Mark Wrighton, to be
Provost. Examine Wrighton’s brusk and totally inappropriate
response to Dr. Noninski (Exhibit H). Wrighton’s “let me make
this perfectly clear I have no comment” letter is not a response
that a scientist with integrity would have written.
After the events of 1991-1992, there followed many hard years
of struggle, working with other engineers and scientists in cold
fusion research, and trying to correct false impressions about
cold fusion investigations that were being made by journalists
and government officials. The launching of Infinite Energy magazine
in 1995 (and its short-lived precursor, Cold Fusion magazine,
1994) was, in part, a response to the egregious distortions about
cold fusion that were initiated by members of the MIT PFC.
Fire from Ice was well received by many reviewers, but its message
was largely drowned out by an onslaught of scurrilous anticold
fusion books, the first one by Frank Close, Too Hot to Handle
(1991). Dr. Richard Petrasso of the MIT PFC had aided Close’s
work. He was in complete agreement with Close’s opinions; witness
his comment published on the front page of the Sunday New
York Times, March 17, 1991, which was essentially a laudatory
review of the book by Close. Recall Dr. Petrasso’s words: “I was
convinced for a while it was absolute fraud. Now I’ve softened.
They [Pons and Fleischmann] probably believed in what they were
doing. But how they represented it was a dear violation of how science
should be done.” A case of the pot calling the kettle black, I’d
say, in light of the technical publication to which Petrasso (and fifto
handle the data and write a subsequent “Technical Appendix”
that made further excuses for data mishandling. As Dr. Swartz
has shown, the data was, indeed, altered yet again during the
“investigation”! For now, I hope that Dr. Swartz’s analysis, and
my own assessments and exchanges with President Vest, will be
examined carefully by all who still have an open mind about the
historical development of the cold fusion controversy.
My conclusions about the inappropriate data manipulation
at the MIT PFC are my own and my opinions about the implications
of this data mishandling are to be considered distinct from Dr.
Swartz’s. My assessments of the MIT calorimetry and data handling
appear in my Letter of Resignation (Exhibit L), my formal
request for an investigation of scientific misconduct (Exhibit R),
and other exchanges with President Vest that form the exhibits
to this report. But let me quote Dr. Swartz’s summary conclusions
from his fourteen-page technical paper:
From: Dr. Mitchell R. Swartz’s, “Re-Examination of a Key Cold
Fusion Experiment: ‘Phase-II’ Calorimetry by the MIT Plasma
Fusion Center,” Fusion Facts, August 1992, pp. 27-40.
The light water curve was published by the PFC essentially intact
after the first baseline shift, whereas the heavy water curve was shifted
a second time. The cells were matched, 12 and solvent loss would
be expected to be greater for H 2 O.
The Phase-II methodology is flawed because it masks a constant
[steady-state] excess heat. Furthermore this paradigm fails to use
either the true baseline drift, and may avoid the first 15% of the D 2 O
curve in Types 3, 3 B , 4, and 5 curves.
What constitutes “data reduction” is sometimes but not always
open to scientific debate. The application of a low pass filter to an
electrical signal or the cutting in half of a hologram properly constitute
“data reduction,” but the asymmetric shifting of one curve
of a paired set is probably not. The removal of the entire steady
state signal is also not classical “data reduction.”
In the May 1992 Appendix, the PFC retroactively claims its
“systematic errors now total 100 to 400 milliwatts, implying an
insensitivity of >30 kilojoules.
Much current skepticism of the cold fusion phenomenon was
created by the PFC paper’s reporting “failure-to-reproduce.” 12 as
opposed to its later claimed “to insensitive-to-confirm” experiments
17 ]. Because it may be the single most widely quoted work
used by critics of cold fusion to dismiss the phenomenon, the
paper should have clarified all “data” points and the methodology
used. Apparent curve proliferation, volatile points, asymmetric
curve shifts, combined with an impaired methodology have needlessly
degraded the sensitivity, and believability of the Phase II
calorimetry experiment.
12. D. Albagli, R. Ballinger, V. Cammarata, X. Chen, R.M. Crooks, C.
Fiore, M.P.J. Gaudreau, I. Hwang, C.K. Li, P. Linsay, S.C. Luckhardt,
R.R. Parker, R.D. Petrasso, M.O. Schloh, K.W. Wensel, M.S. Wrighton,
“Measurement and Analysis of Neutron and Gamma-Ray Emission
Rates, other Fusion Products, and the Power in Electrochemical Cells
Having Pd Cathodes,” Journal of Fusion Energy, 9, 133, 1990.
17. S.C. Luckhardt, “Technical Appendix to D. Albagli et al., J. Fusion
Energy, 1990, Calorimetry Error Analysis,” MIT Report PFC/RR-92-
7, (May 1992).
Present MIT students as well as alumni should investigate this
most unfortunate episode for themselves, and take action—for
the well-being of MIT. There is no doubt in my mind that the
MIT PFC calorimetry was mishandled and fraudulently misrepresented.
Dr. Swartz’s paper, using proper analysis that
could have been performed by the MIT PFC, determined that
“the average power by this method is 62 milliwatts (±34 milliwatts).”
As Dr. Swartz states, this is “qualitatively similar to the
value expected for a ‘successful’ experiment.” Furthermore, Dr.
Swartz credits in his references and conclusions my August
1991 complaint to President Vest (see Exhibit R) that a “20% discrepancy
in heater power, used to heat the same volume of fluid,
has been suggested as corroborating evidence that the heavy
water cell produced excess heat.”
At the very least it was scientifically and morally required
that the MIT PFC group repeat its experiments, rather than having
them cited year after year against cold fusion, when they
should have been retracted or corrected, per the suggestion of
physicist Dr. Charles McCutchen—see Exhibit Z-11. To cover up
a sorry episode may have been comfortable for the MIT administration
in an era in which cold fusion had not yet achieved general
acceptance (thanks in no small way to some on the MIT
staff), but that era will pass. An age of enlightenment is coming
that will make the tokamak hot fusion program at MIT a footnote
to history. The era of safe, clean, and abundant energy from
water—non-chemical energy from hydrogen—will drown the
deceivers from MIT to Princeton. (If anyone has any doubt about
this emerging commercial reality, they should consult one of the
energy-from-water corporations that was influenced by the
announcement of Fleischmann and Pons—see BlackLight Power
Corp. [www.blacklightpower.com]. No doubt many bright MIT
graduates will be employed there.) No one can say that we did
not warn MIT officials of the consequences if this important matter
was allowed to be mishandled at MIT the way it was and
continues to be.
16 Infinite Energy • ISSUE 24, 1999 • MIT Special Report