
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, March 17, 1991                   TAG: 9103170102
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

BOOK DISPUTES COLD-FUSION CLAIMS

The startling assertion by two chemists that they had achieved nuclear fusion in a test tube was based on invented data whose publication involved a serious breach of ethics and a violation of scientific protocol, prominent scientists have concluded.

The two researchers dismiss the charge, saying that their work on low-temperature, or cold, fusion was ethically sound and beyond reproach.

The cold-fusion debate erupted two years ago when the chemists, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, announced at the University of Utah that they had captured the secret of the sun's energy in a test tube at room temperature.

The claim set off a race by thousands of scientists around the world to duplicate the experiment in the hope that they could develop a new source of safe cheap and virtually limitless energy.

But the lack of independent proof eventually caused most of the cold-fusion efforts to collapse.

Now, a new book by a respected scientist says the crucial evidence in the original claim was so skewed as to be "invented."

The book, "Too Hot to Handle," to be published in May by Princeton University Press, is by Frank Close, a physicist with top posts at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and the Rutherford Laboratory in Britain.

In a telephone interview last week, Close said that publication of the Utah data with no hint of its dubious origin was a "serious error of judgment" that violated the scientific code of ethics. Other scientists with intimate knowledge of the affair have come to similar conclusions.

But Fleischmann said he strongly disagreed. In a telephone interview from his home in Britain, he denied any impropriety and said the data presented were perfectly legitimate for a first paper.

"We didn't do anything wrong," he said. "It was a preliminary note that didn't contain details."

But Fleischmann conceded that he now considers the disputed data "rubbish," although he still believes in cold fusion.

by CNB