Storm in a tea cup
LA Times
Purdue’s review of Rusi Taleyarkhan’s work came as the journal Nature reported
in an online news report hat his
colleagues and others had made allegations about the credibility of the research.
Purdue University is launching a review into concerns raised by members of its nuclear engineering faculty about the highly publicised ‘tabletop fusion’ experiments conducted by one of their colleagues, officials said recently.
Purdue’s review of Rusi Taleyarkhan’s work came as the journal Nature
reported in an online news report hat his colleagues and others had made allegations about the credibility of the research. Taleyarkhan attracted widespread attention in 2002 when he said in the journal Science he had triggered nuclear fusion — the kind of energy that drives the sun, in a device the size of a coffee maker. Despite numerous attempts, other researchers have been unable to verify his findings.
“The research claims involved are very significant and the concerns expressed are extremely serious,'' Purdue Provost Sally Mason said. Nature reported that two faculty members had charged that Taleyarkhan had kept them from seeing his data and from publicising their negative findings.
Taleyarkhan's work has drawn intense attention in part because of fears that it could end up like the ‘cold fusion’ experiments of Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, who claimed in 1989 to have produced tabletop fusion — work that was later debunked.
Purdue’s Norberg said officials have been unable to verify the accuracy of Nature’s account.
Taleyarkhan said his device had fused hydrogen atoms and released energy in a reaction produced by sonoluminescence, the process of passing sound waves through certain liquids to create bubbles that pop with a flash of light and bursts of high temperature.
“I don’t think this was fraud,” said Lawrence Crum, a researcher at the University of Washington at Seattle and a co-discoverer of single bubble sonoluminescence, who nonetheless said Taleyarkhan’s conclusions are wrong. “I think he misinterpreted the results.”
The editor in chief of Science, Donald Kennedy, said the charges against Taleyarkhan are serious and the journal will await the results of Purdue's review.
“There was some disagreement among peer reviewers, but the majority opinion of some very smart people was it was an interesting result and should be published,'” he said of the 2002 article that set off the firestorm.