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

teen others) has signed his name. Nothing much has changed for
Dr. Petrasso. In 1997 he was quoted by writer Bennett Daviss: “The
ongoing reports of excess heat and nuclear by-products catch people’s
attention about as much as the occasional UFO report. I have
better things to do with my time.” (In TWA Ambassador article, September
1997, see reprint in IE No. 17.) He and Professor Parker continue
to spend your money on hot fusion.
There were other negative books, one by DoE’s John Huizenga
(Cold Fusion: The Scientific Fiasco of the Century, 1992), and
another by science journalist Gary Taubes (Bad Science: The Short
Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion, 1993). Taubes became a
Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT for a year, a nominal
honor for him, if not a disgrace for MIT. The MIT News Office,
to my knowledge, never published one word about the existence
of Fire from Ice, nor the fact that Fire from Ice was nominated
in 1991 for the Pulitzer Prize by John Wiley & Sons as one of
only two of its books so nominated that year. Professors at MIT
routinely bombard the News Office with requests that their
every major or minor award be acknowledged in Tech Talk. Virtually
all such requests are granted.
So goes PR at MIT—ever protective of the MIT Administration
and its deficiencies—whether in flaps over an MIT student being
killed by an alcohol overdose at an MIT fraternity after warnings
were ignored by President Vest (See Boston Globe, October 1, 1997,
p.1 “Students Warned MIT on Drinking—Complaints Began in
1992), or the very serious matter of data fudging and misrepresentation
by MIT hot fusion scientists. The MIT Administration
clearly was not happy by the spate of publicity that my resignation
from the News Office generated. It acted accordingly.
The MIT PFC continues to receive Federal funding for its lucrative
hot fusion projects—over $250 million since 1989. One of the
ways that MIT helps to insure the continued flow of such funding
is by having President Vest sit on the various Federal panels that
make recommendations to the Administration and the the Department
of Energy. Now that former Physics Dept. Head Professor
Ernest Moniz is a Deputy U.S. Secretary of Energy, MIT’s ability to
bring influence to bear for hot fusion will be even stronger.
In a 1995 issue of the Journal of Fusion Energy we find “The
U.S. Program of Fusion Energy Research and Development:
Report of the Fusion Review Panel of the President’s Council of
Advisor’s on Science and Technology (PCAST),” (Vol. 14, No. 2,
1995, pp. 213-250). One of the nine co-authors is none other than
Charles M. Vest. The report’s summary states, in part: “Funding
for fusion energy R&D by the Federal government is an important
investment in the development of an attractive and possibly
essential new energy source for this country and the world
in the middle of the next century and beyond. . .The private sector
can not and will not bear much of the funding burden for
fusion at this time because the development costs are too high
and the potential economic returns too distant. But funding
fusion is a bargain for society as a whole.” That’s their opinion,
not ours. This is not even the opinion about hot fusion of many
technologists who have nothing to do with cold fusion.
The report states, “. . .we believe there is a strong case for the
funding levels for fusion currently proposed by the U.S. Department
of Energy (DoE)—increasing from $366 million in FY1996
to about $860 million in FY2002 and averaging $645 million
between FY1995 and FY2005.” It goes on to acknowledge that
“Although the program just described is reasonable and desirable,
it does not appear to be realistic in the current climate of
budgetary constraints. . .” So the report asks for less, in the tradition
of grabbing for whatever the bureaucracy thinks it can
get: “. . .to preserve what we believe to be the most indispensable
elements of the U.S. fusion effort and associated international
collaboration.” The panel recommended about $320 million/year
and continues further fantasy thinking about committing
Federal $billions in continued support for ITER (International
Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor). Fortunately, the
U.S. Congress withdrew support from ITER in late 1998.
And, wonder of wonders, the 1995 report speaks directly
about the need to continue to support MIT’s Alcator C-Mod tokamak
reactor. I suppose that in the general run of how Federal
funding of science is promoted by numerous interest groups, this
apparent conflict of interest—an MIT President recommending
that MIT receive further funding for its hot fusion reactor—is not
unusual. However, such advising by MIT’s Vest is very unseemly,
when seen in the context of the cut-off of all DoE funding for
cold fusion, resulting from the 1989 negative report and from the
MIT PFC experiment on which that report was based. Furthermore,
as this history has made clear, President Vest played no
small role in the whitewashing of this 1989 misconduct.
In another report, this one directly to President Clinton on
November 4, 1997, “Report to the President on Federal Energy
Research and Development for the Challenges of the Twenty-
First Century,” the Energy Research and Development Panel of
PCAST, which includes Dr. Vest, we find the general recommendation
spelled out in the cover letter to President Clinton:
“The report recommends an increase, over a five-year period, of
$1 billion in the Department of Energy’s annual budget for
applied energy technology R&D. The largest share of such an
increase would go to R&D in energy efficiency and renewable
energy technologies, but nuclear fusion and fission would also
receive increases. The composition of the R&D supported on
advanced fossil-fuel technologies would change in favor of
long-term opportunities, including fuel cells and carbon sequestration
technologies, but the overall spending level for fossil
fuel technologies would stay roughly constant in real terms.” In
table “ES.1” we find the fusion wish list after 1998 in “millions
of as-spent dollars”: 1997—$232 (actual); 1998—$225 (request);
1999—$250; 2000—$270; 2001—$290; 2002—$320; 2003—$328.
The report states that the request for fusion is the “third largest
increase” of the various energy items. It calls the funding “. . .easily
justified as the sort of investment government should be making
in a high-risk but potentially very-high yield energy option
for society, in which the size and time horizon of the program
essentially rule out private funding.” Well, virtually all of the scientists
working in cold fusion in 1999 think that cold fusion is,
indeed, “a very-high yield energy option” for society. Private
industry has invested in it in a limited way, and more will come.
If it were not for the Federally paid scientists—in hot fusion and
high energy physics—who assaulted cold fusion with lies and
deceptions—there would likely be even more private money
now flowing into cold fusion. One thing is certain: no private
company in its right mind will spend any significant money on
tokamak hot fusion, as practiced at MIT and elsewhere.
What it boils down to is this: By studying the history MIT and cold
fusion, one learns that paradigm-paralyzed and unethical scientists
have the motive and means to wreck massive damage against an emerging
science and technology, especially when an aging and well-financed
program is threatened. An MIT President who has access to the highest
power levels of the Federal government should not be contributing to
the distortion of government spending by feathering MIT’s nest and
ignoring facts. MIT alumni/ae, students, staff, and President Charles
M. Vest need to consider this—E. Mallove
17 Infinite Energy • ISSUE 24, 1999 • MIT Special Report