Table Top Fusion

Lawyers have a saying that important cases make bad law. In recent weeks the development of the fusion story has demonstrated that important discoveries make bad science. One would hope that the potential significance of the findings, and the fact that they appear totally incompatible with current understanding, would cause workers to strive for the highest standards of scientific rigor. What have we seen, instead?

--The initial disclosure is made at a press conference; the first “scientific” publication meets no standards at all, containing little experimental detail, control experiments, or real data.

--A group at MIT spends no more than a couple of days trying to repeat the findings, then calls a press conference to announce the work is wrong; another group at Texas A&M; does the same, except for reaching the opposite conclusion.

--The Utah workers declare that there is no possibility that the process could lead to a thermonuclear explosion, despite the fact that they have no idea what process may be going on.

--The Wall Street Journal, in an editorial, implicitly criticizes skeptical scientists who were quick to “toss cold water” on the initial reports.

Most commentators seem to think that this will either be a stupendous new discovery, or a debacle comparable to the “polywater” fiasco last decade. In fact, we could get both: I fear that the cause of excellence in science has been and will be significantly damaged by this affair, no matter how it eventually turns out.

JAY A. LABINGER

Pasadena