The Nation : Experts Cancel Visit to Utah Fusion Site

An Energy Department panel evaluating cold fusion experiments canceled a visit to the University of Utah after researcher B. Stanley Pons bristled at the makeup of the committee, a Salt Lake City newspaper reported. Pons demanded that the panel be changed, either by dismissing members he feels are hostile to his research or by adding friendly ones, the Deseret News said. Pons said he and co-researcher Martin Fleischmann, a British colleague from the University of Southampton, believe the panel was “organized in a manner that can only lead to a negative and non-objective report” on fusion research. Last March, Pons and Fleischmann announced they had achieved room-temperature, or cold, fusion. They said the energy generated by their experiment was up to 100 times that needed to produce the reaction. Scores of laboratories have attempted to duplicate the experiment, but few report similar results.