User:AniRaptor2001/Cold Fusion report

The Significance of the Fleischmann-Pons Cold Fusion Controversy to the Discipline of Engineering

Where, ethically and/or experimentally did they go wrong What did their errors reveal about the nature of the scientific process What does the episode teach young engineers about laboratory results

Abstract

purpose, high-level issues most critical to conclusions, summarize the conclusions.

Introduction/Background

According to the original paper, published in 1989 by chemists Martin Fleischmann of the University of Southampton, and Stanley Pons of the University of Utah, in the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry, the experiments they conducted into the “electrochemically induced nuclear fusion of deuterium” had a basis in the century-old study of the “strange behavior of electrogenerated hydrogen dissolved in palladium”. The experiments involved performing electrolysis using a heavy water electrolyte and a palladium cathode, with current applied in a continuous manner over the course of several weeks. The electrolysis occurred within a calorimeter in order to quantify and compare the energy entering and leaving the electrolysis cell. The scientists wondered if the packing of hydrogen nuclei inside the palladium catalyst during the electrolysis would be tight enough to cause fusion to occur.

Fleischmann and Pons reported that on occasion they had observed the temperature within the cell to increase suddenly, and maintain this increase for a period of hundreds of hours. The announcement of their results came as a great shock to the scientific community, as fusion was viewed as an ultimate but nearly unattainable energy source; it would not be unprecedented, but certainly unusal, for a breakthrough to come about in such a simple, overlooked form. The lack of reproduceability of the experiment furthered skepticism towards the announcement; independent laboratories attempting to confirm the study would variously find that no heat, little heat, or a great deal of heat was evolved during the procedure. Fleischmann and Pons additionally claimed that radiation associated with nuclear, and not chemical reactions, was measured during the experiments. Similar results ensued when researchers attempted to confirm this aspect, as well.

Discussion

In contrast to the relatively simple process of nuclear fission which lies at the heart of modern nuclear energy, nuclear fusion, the process that gives stars their immense energy output, has proven to be far more difficult to reproduce in a controlled fashion here on earth. Achieving fusion power is necessarily a more complex problem than causing fission to occur; creating the conditions that enable fusion to take place requires large amounts of energy on its own, greatly reducing and even cancelling out the usefulness of a fusion reactor as a power plant. Cold fusion, if discovered to be a workable concept, had far-reaching implications with regards to the availability of energy in a future world where cold fusion would produce nearly endless energy from a small amount of fuel, with minimal external energy input to maintain the necessary conditions.

Because of these great implications, great pressure was exerted by the University of Utah to promptly publish the cold fusion work, which would allow it to be patented and commercialized before other interests could swoop in on this potentially very simple 'solution to all the world's energy problems'. While contemporary scientific practice dictates that a body of research must be reviewed by the scientific community, and found to be reproducible, before it is accepted into mainstream scientific belief. In contrast, cold fusion quickly became a media sweetheart, achieving notoriety before it could be completely verified through the scientific method. Rather than learning of the cold fusion work through the conventional publication channels, scientists and academics were forced to source from news reports; their attempts to replicate the experiment relied on flawed and incomplete methodologies, which in turn resulted in a flood of wildly varied outcomes that further clouded the controversy.

With the chemists' experiment already proving difficult to reproduce, Fleischmann and Pons failed to address another fundamental aspect of the scientific method, by refusing to provide comprehensive sets of results and cooperate with the majority of the researchers who seeked to reproduce the experiment. With their credibility on the line, they appeared before the American Physical Society to provide the final defense of their work to the scientific community. They were ultimately accused of having carried out a poor experiment, committing such gross errors as failing to account for the heightened levels of background radiation caused by accumulation of radon gas in their laboratory, and mistaking that same radiation for gamma ray byproducts of nuclear fusion.

Conclusions

The cold fusion controversy serves to highlight the importance of comprehensive review, and the virtue of patience, the is involved in the ideal scientific method. The principle of Occam's razor dictates that "when you have two competing theories that make exactly the same predictions, the simpler one is the better." By jumping to the conclusion that what they were observing was cold fusion, making great assumptions while failing to to consider the possibility of experimental error or the existence of some less extraordinary phenomenon, Fleischmann and Pons violated the principle of the Razor. The fallout of their erroneous conclusions was magnified by the pressure exerted by the University of Utah, whose leadership were enthralled by the possibility of capitalizing on this great discovery, almost blindly discarding any possibility that the work might actually be meaningless.

Modern science and engineering are predominantly driven by the desire to profit from new discoveries and creations. The scientists and engineers who dedicate their lives to the pursuit of their objectives are also greatly invested in their work. The pressure to succeed is enormous; the capitalist backer who wants to see their investment maximize its potential returns, and the scientist or engineer does not wish to see their life's work result in failure. This pressure can cause a normally exhaustive researcher to include a value they would normally brush off as a fluke, because it might provide the tiny variation needed to declare experimental success. It can make an engineer, concerned with keeping their design within the economic constraints set by their client, exclude a safety feature that could prove vital during implementation. Under these circumstances, the professional's sense of ethics sees itself stretched to the limit, and often violated. Engineers can risk losing their jobs if they refuse to adhere to budget constraints in the name of safety, and scientists risk losing their credibility if they give in to pressure from their institution's administration to "shoot first, aim later", hoping to be the first to present findings, rather than be confident that they are reliable results. As educated professionals, scientists and engineers must use their wisdom to support their sense of ethics, to ensure that their work is objective,