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

over a 100 h period, Figure 6, indicates a significant drift caused by a
reduction of the solvent volume. We demonstrated that this drift was
due to solvent loss rather than to an unknown power source, p x , by calibrating
ph as a function of the electrolyte solution volume. When
enough solvent was added to the D 2 O cell to compensate for that lost to
the electrolysis at the end of the 100 h period shown in figure 6, p h
returned to within 20% of its original value.” This statement is shocking
because the authors are suggesting that a 20% discrepancy in heater
power (over 200 milliwatts) to heat the same volume of fluid that was
present initially can be ignored. In fact, if this experimental finding of a
20% discrepancy is true, it might be the best evidence of all that the
heavy water cell really did produce anomalous excess heat.
The report immediately follows with yet another blatantly untenable
statement: “If the total volume of solvent loss over the course of the
experiment had been taken into account, including that lost to evaporation,
p h would have been even closer to its original value.” If the cell
has been refilled to compensate for the water lost to electrolysis, then
what fraction of that refilled water disappeared through evaporation
and what fraction disappeared through gas evolution is irrelevant. The
net effect of these statements—just as in the unexplained downshift—is
to obscure the possible evidence for excess power.
4. Subsequent Claims that the Basic Objective of the Research was
Other than Claimed in the Report
Long before the concerns that are being enumerated in this letter
had been brought to the attention of the MIT group, I met with Dr. Stanley
Luckhardt to try to understand in detail how the MIT work was
done. Frankly, I was politely looking for assurances that the data had
not been arbitrarily down-shifted and that there might be some fundamental
unpublished reason for the shift. I met with Dr. Luckhardt on
January 25, 1991 and, without being accusatory at the time, received
extremely unsatisfactory explanations. Dr. Luckhardt could not explain
how the “bias,” as he called it, was taken out to make the resulting
power curves seem so similar. In fact, he agreed at the time that there
might be 20 milliwatts of excess power in the MIT group’s heavy water
cell, “but not the 80 milliwatts that Fleischmann was talking about.”
This litany continues of redefining the objectives of the Phase II
experiment to argue that no unwarranted data moving has occurred. In
the belated letter of explanation that I received from Professor Parker
(see Attachment #6) he writes: “The implicit assumption is that we were
looking for fast turn-on of the anomalous heat production and so it was
legitimate to subtract out a slow baseline drift caused by depletion of
the electrolyte.” It seems to me that technical papers cannot have
“implicit assumptions” as to their basic objectives. The basic objective
was to find out whether there was a difference between heavy water
and light water performance. There is no clearer evidence that such a
comparison was what was originally intended by the MIT group than
the paper’s remark about the comparison of the light water and heavy
water cell power output near the end of a 200 hour run (page 19 of
Attachment #1). There is no discussion there of looking for “fast turn
on” of power. I believe that this is a newly invented experimental objective
to justify any past juggling of data that the group might have done.
5. Public Renunciation in June 1991 by Professor Parker of the 1989
Calorimetry Work, Whereas the Work Was and Continues to be Promoted
as Sound and Definitive Regarding Excess Heat
On June 7, 1991, during the question and answer period following
the talk by Dr. Frank Close at the PFC, Professor Parker had this
exchange with me (transcribed from a tape of the meeting):
Parker: We at MIT looked very carefully at Fleischmann and Pons,
and this is what we came up with. [If we] think we ought to look at
another set of experiments and we think we have expertise, we will. But
just let it fall where it lies. We’re not going to come out one way or
another until we look at it.
Mallove: Would you consider re-evaluating your own experiment,
if I brought in experts to evaluate it? Would you consider that? Because
I’ve asked Dr. Luckhardt for several weeks now—and I know he’s not
here today. He told me at one point he would provide me with the
heater power curve for the light water experiment so that I could ascertain
what the heck was going on in that experiment. He then finally
ended up saying to me he would not give it to me—or that it would take
a week to do it.
Parker: I think, Gene, that what you showed up here earlier is completely
a surprise to me. [The Phase II comparison power tests of light
water versus heavy water, published and unpublished versions.] We
will give you every piece of data we ever took.
Parker: My personal. . .
Mallove: Fine.
Parker: I’ll tell you what my opinion is of that work, because I was
part of it. I don’t think it’s worth very much. Alright? And that’s why
it’s just published in a tech report. I don’t think it’s worth very much. I
think to do calorimetry is one of the hardest things I ever tried to do. I’d
rather stick to plasma physics.
Mallove: But, Ron, with all due respect, I agree with you, I agree
with you [that the work was not conclusive].
Parker: When you have an open system is where you can make big
errors, where you don’t know the overpotential, the electrode potential,
and so on. These things are unknown. I mean it’s really tough and that’s
why I don’t put any stock at all -- you can redraw those curves anyway
that you want. I don’t think that data is worth anything. Now you may be
able to find something in it. I did the experiment; I don’t think it’s physics.
Mallove: But what I’ve seen, because I certainly see it from Douglas
Morrison [of CERN] and I see it from people like Frank Close and
others, that your prestigious laboratory with its excellent resources is
being used in some respect as a standard which everyone else is supposed
to adhere to. . .
Professor Parker continues to insist in representing his data in two
different ways. Both before and after this remarkable June 7, 1991
renunciation we have statements that the work shows no evidence of
excess power. How is it that Professor Parker thinks he can disparage
his group’s own work in public and later claim that it has validity? This
is not a small point. The MIT work has been cited on numerous occasions
by people bent on attacking cold fusion researchers for their supposed
“delusions” and “incompetence.” We never before heard from
any member of the PFC team that the work was “worthless.” Quite the
opposite. Professor Parker’s colleague Professor Mark S. Wrighton in a
letter on October 10, 1990 ( to Dr. Vesco Noninski (see Attachment #9),
was quite firm that the MIT work was definitive.
6. Obstruction of Other Scientists’ Attempts to Access Data Critical to
Understanding the Group’s Experiments
It is clear that for about a year now the MIT group has been very
reluctant to release data that would allow other researchers, including
myself, to gain insight into their calorimetry work. I introduced an electrochemist
visiting from Bulgaria, Dr. Vesco Noninski, to Dr. Stanley
Luckhardt on August 15, 1990. Noninski had viewed the MIT work very
positively, because it was one of the few experiments in calorimetry in
which at least some raw data was published. He had begun to believe
that the MIT heater power data for the heavy water cell could be analyzed
to show evidence of excess power. There followed discussions
between Drs. Noninski and Dr. Luckhardt in which it became clear that
there was a difference of opinion between the two on how the experiment
should be analyzed. But in spite of Dr. Noninski’s completely
valid request to Dr. Luckhardt to receive the raw data corresponding to
the light water cell, he would not release this data. Both Dr. Luckhardt
and Professor Wrighton wrote letters to Dr. Noninski in which they dismissed
his analysis outright.
Much later, in early May 1991, I was attempting to write a paper for
Fusion Technology, to assess the MIT Phase-II calorimetry and to remark
about the relative points made by Drs. Noninski and Luckhardt. So I
asked Dr. Luckhardt if he could give me the light water heater power
curve. Initially he said he would do this at a pre-arranged meeting
between us. There followed over the next several weeks a series meetings
that were cancelled by him. Finally on May 29, 1991, in a lengthy
phone conversation with Dr. Luckhardt, he said that he would not turn
over the data to me. The reasons he offered were that it would take too
much time for him to explain to me how to correctly interpret the data.
He said it would take four or five days to interpret the data. He further
put me off by suggesting that I talk to another group “perhaps SRI” to
get advice on calorimetry. Even though he would not give me the data,
he said of the two heater power curves that they “looked pretty much
the same” but that “fluctuations” were different, and he could not recall
which one was unusual in which respect.
After I showed the apparently down-shifted intermediate
43 Infinite Energy • ISSUE 24, 1999 • MIT Special Report