genie in a bottle

One of Val Kilmer's less stellar roles was as Simon Templar in 1997's The Saint. Templar is a master thief and master of disguise who takes on assumed names associated with Catholic Saints. (Simon Templar was, apparently, the patron saint of magic.) Eventually, he's hired by a Russian industrialist (always evil characters) to steal a formula for cold fusion from a pretty young female scientist, thereby having access to the secret of heating millions of homes with a few gallons of water. This being Hollywood, he falls in love with her instead, and together they bring limitless energy to the world at large, using nothing but electrodes in a jar of heavy water. Ain't love grand?

The film's scientific premise is right up there with the presentation of sonoluminescence as a powerful energy source in Chain Reaction. The main difference is that sonoluminescence -- while nowhere near the stage of development depicted onscreen -- is nonetheless a well-respected, well-funded field of study, whereas cold fusion has pretty much languished along the edges of the lunatic fringe since its alleged "discovery" almost 20 years ago. It has a handful of supporters among scientists, but the field boasts a far greater number of crackpots who inevitably undermine the rare occasions when a bona fide result is obtained in such experiments. Prevailing opinion is that the vast majority of cold fusion research falls under the rubric of "pathological science": the results are always on the verge of a stunning validation, and whenever said validation fails (again) to materialize, there is always a handy rationale for why it isn't really a definitive failure.

As recently as 2000, TIME magazine listed cold fusion as one of the "worst ideas" of the 20th century. You' might never know that if your introduction to cold fusion was last week's short article in Wired by Mark Anderson, reporting on a recent small convocation of diehard cold fusion advocates. Chances are, you'd come away feeling that these plucky, anti-establishment rebel scientists are thisclose (as close as Kilmer and his co-star in the still shot at right, generating their own form of heat) to achieving a cheap, plentiful supply of energy based on simple high school chemistry -- if only that stodgy, closed-minded, mean scientific establishment would stop making fun of them and provide sufficient funding resources.

It's admittedly a compelling narrative -- everyone loves seeing an underdog prevail -- it just isn't true. The real story of cold fusion is every bit as fascinating and provocative, even tragic in places, but not nearly as black and white. It's less about scientific villainy, and more about all-too-human foibles. That's why there have been several full-length books written on the subject. Like a great deal of science, cold fusion doesn't lend itself to the broad strokes and sound bite syntax of most popular science reporting. That doesn't mean a reporter shouldn't try to temper the latest claims of cold fusion's stubborn proponents with some context gleaned from its checkered history.

I'm sympathetic to the challenge Anderson faced in writing the article, given his space limitations, but he doesn't seem to have done much due diligence about including any skeptical context, or even the obligatory opposing view. Everything he needed is readily available online, including original video footage of the infamous 1989 press conference that started it all, coverage in both the science trade press and mainstream media, and the full reports from the Department of Energy, which conducted official reviews in both 1989 and 2004. A quick online trip to Amazon would have yielded a couple of popular science books offering both pro (Eugene Mallove's Fire From Ice) and con (Gary Taubes' Bad Science: The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion) viewpoints. I'm not asking Anderson to include all of that, but can't we have just a little skepticism? Pretty please?

It's all the more distressing coming on the heels of a lengthy 2004 feature in Wired by Charles Platt that painted an even more unflattering portrait of the scientific establishment, describing its resistance to the notion of cold fusion as "a colossal conspiracy of denial," rather than professional scientists merely rejecting something due to lack of convincing empirical evidence. Clearly, Wired has picked the more simplistic, underdog "framing" narrative: cold fusion scientists have been deeply wronged by an overly skeptical entrenched "establishment," and any day now they will be vindicated and save the world with their revolutionary new energy source. Hollywood should love it.

(In fairness, the magazine's cold fusion coverage is still better than Popular Mechanics, which ran a despicable piece of fear-mongering cover story in 2004 claiming that terrorists could use cold fusion to build their own hydrogen bombs. For an example of truly stellar reporting on the topic, see Sharon Weinberger's November 21, 2004, feature for The Washington Post, which is the most balanced and nuanced treatment of the cold fusion controversy I've yet read in the mainstream media outlets.)

Here's a bit of background for readers with only a passing familiarity with the controversy. Way back in 1989, two chemists at the University of Utah named Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann believed they had succeeded in producing nuclear fusion in a jar -- without the need to recreate the temperatures and pressures found in the centers of stars which run on "hot" fusion. We can achieve hot nuclear fusion, but it requires more energy than it gives back, so it's pretty much an energy sinkhole for the time being (although the physicists are working the problem, yes they are!). Anyway, their finding was counter to everything known to date about nuclear fusion, both in theory and experiment.

Generally, when there's a significant breakthrough in science, it's written up in a formal paper containing all the information needed for other scientists to replicate the experiment and test the results -- because reproducibility is one of the most fundamental elements of the scientific method. That paper is submitted to a reputable, peer-reviewed journal, and if enough reviewers give it a thumb's up, the paper is published, and other scientists can critique and/or build upon their work. The system is imperfect -- egos and rivalries can get in the way -- but over the long haul, it has served science well. It's an equally accepted maxim that the more potentially revolutionary the result, the greater the burden of proof: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence in order to be accepted by the scientific community. And cold fusion was a truly extraordinary claim.

Pons and Fleischmann, for whatever reason, ignored the established protocol and jumped right into the public domain, announcing their results in a March 23 press conference -- even as they were applying for patents for what they believed would become a hugely lucrative industry. Those pending patent applications were cited as the reason they couldn't reveal all the details of their experiment or provide appropriate documentation of their results -- which meant their results couldn't be tested and verified by other scientists. Basically, they wanted it both ways: they wanted scientific glory for their work, while hoarding the details in hopes of reaping a fortune in proprietary patent rights.

The Utah press release made the situation worse by indulging in unfortunate hyperbole, hailing the breakthrough as something that would provide "an inexhaustible source of energy." (Scientists are all too familiar with this tendency of academic media departments.) Now, anyone who's covered science as a reporter knows to be wary when such a claim is made: we're all for new and improved energy sources, but inexhaustible? Nature just doesn't work that way; it sounded more like that perennial bugbear, perpetual motion, rather than any kind of serious science. The New York Times was suitably cautious, and initially refused to run the story, but the Wall Street Journal's Jerry Bishop and his editors apparently just saw the dollar signs and published a euphoric front-page article on the breakthrough. Soon other major newspapers followed suit, and it was a media feeding frenzy.

Scientists -- especially physicists -- shared the Times' skepticism, in part because of the manner in which Pons and Fleischmann had made their announcement. "Conventional science requires you to play by certain rules," retired Los Alamos scientist turned underground cold fusion researcher Edmund Storms is quoted in the 2004 Wired feature as saying. "First, thou shalt not announce thy results via a press conference. Second, thou shalt not exaggerate the results. Third, thou shalt tell other scientists precisely what thou did. They broke all of those rules." The world may love a rebel, but the unwritten "rules" of scientific culture are in place for very good reasons -- and if you break them, it's best to have a damned good reason of your own for doing so, or at least killer experimental results with all the requisite documentation in hand for independent verification. Is it any wonder Pons and Fleischmann faced a rather cool reception?

Eventually they published a full-length (over 50 pages!) paper with all of the necessary details, but it was rushed, sloppy, and contained at least one egregious error concerning their analysis of the gamma ray spectra. This did not help strengthen their already shaky case. Still, they might have been grudgingly forgiven their poor scientific manners and initial awkward missteps if their work had been verified. Scientists love a good underdog story as much as anybody, and there's numerous examples in history of lone scientists  with poor social skills laboring against the doubts of colleagues and dire financial straits to prove their pet theory. (And they win! Yay for science!)

The problem was, hundreds of researchers all over the world scurried to reproduce the experiments, and invariably failed. Sure, there were a couple of glimmers of hope here and there: teams at Texas A&M and the Georgia Institute of Technology excitedly reported results of excess heat and neutron production, respectively, in April, but withdrew those results almost immediately, citing "lack of evidence." By the end of 1989, a panel of experts had conducted a Department of Energy review of the matter, and concluded there was no basis for the claims. As far as mainstream science was concerned, that was the final nail in cold fusion's coffin.

But like a lot of pseudoscience -- to which it is frequently compared -- cold fusion refuses to die. It's tough not to admire the steely resolve of cold fusion advocates, who have faced derision, suffered in their careers, and labored to build their own scientific enterprise from scratch: their own meetings, their own journals, their own community. (Then again, there's a whiff of, "Fine! If we can't play in the big sandbox, we'll just go make our own!") Alas, those are ideal conditions for crackpots to flourish, so they've got some strange bedfellows, but they've also got a handful of otherwise respectable scientists conducting their own experiments in cold fusion. Pons and Fleischmann reportedly had a bitter falling out and parted ways in 1995. Fleischmann is still collaborating on cold fusion research in the UK, but Pons has become something of a recluse. The new dynamic duo of cold fusion is SRI International chemist Michael McKubre and MIT physicist Peter Hagelstein.

Gradually, the "serious" researchers started presenting papers at meetings other than their own, including those of the American Physical Society. Those researchers chipped away at the tarnished reputation of their chosen field, publishing peer-reviewed papers now and then on purported evidence of "low-energy nuclear reactions." Eventually, the DOE decided, in fairness, to take another look at the accumulated evidence over the last 15 years and re-evaluate the cold fusion controversy. This time, they relented just a little: they still didn't find the evidence sufficiently convincing to launch a federally-funded research program. The panel split on the issue of whether subsequent experiments had validated the occasional production of "excess heat," citing poor experimental design, documentation, background control, etc., as muddying their determinations. (Out of 18 members, 12 found no conclusive evidence, five found the evidence somewhat convincing, and only one was completely convinced.) But they felt that funding agencies should consider funding proposed projects on a case-by-case basis, provided those proposals "meet accepted scientific standards and undergo the rigors of peer review."

See? I told you it was a complicated story. That's why I'd normally be sympathetic to Wired's Anderson, faced with the task of conveying the salient points in a short news article. (There's no excuse for Pratt's fawning 2004 feature; is there anyone more zealous than a former skeptic turned convert?)  Your average reporter doesn't have time to do exhaustive research on such a short news article, and frankly, your average reader doesn't want to wade through all the gory technical details. Nonetheless, Anderson could have tracked down at least one skeptical, yet fair-minded, source, to show he had some rudimentary grasp of the complexity of the situation.  Here's a few specific sentences that are badly in need of context:

"Presenters at the MIT event estimated that 3000 published studies from scientists around the world have contributed to the growing canon of evidence...."

I find Anderson's use of the word "canon" here interesting; it implies that something is established beyond question, which cold fusion most certainly is not. More to the point, this is a misleading statement, since very few of those 3000 papers were published in peer-reviewed journals. Certainly some of them were, but this fact should be noted, even just in passing. And don't just take my word for it. Per WaPo's Weinberger, "[T]he most credible cold fusion advocates concede that the vast majority of those papers are of poor quality." She even cites a supporter who calls the collection of papers "toxic waste." That's hardly a resounding endorsement; it certainly wouldn't qualify as a "canon."

"Verification of these controversial results is not the problem -- many labs around the world have reproduced parts of the results many times."

Again, this is misleading. It's true that over the past two decades, there have been reports of what appear to be excess bursts of energy in various experiments. But even Hagelstein admits to continued experimental inconsistency; some "results" have never been reproduced. Cold fusion's claims of verification are based on a bizarre kind of statistical rationale: sure, most of the results are negative, but they have now amassed such a statistically significant sampling of instances of claimed excess heat that at least some of those results must be valid, and any lack of the effect is due to flawed experiments. The WaPo article cites esteemed nuclear physicist Richard Garwin as a source for its dismissal of that tortured argument: "It's absurd to claim that experiments that seem to support cold fusion are valid, while those that don't are flawed." There are a few more mainstream scientists around these days who are willing to concede there might be something of marginal interest going on, but most remain unconvinced that it's bona fide cold fusion. And hardly anyone holds out any hope of it ever becoming a viable energy source.

"Compared to the warehouses worth of billion-dollar gadgetry needed to run 'hot fusion,' cold fusion research is cheap to fund. And yet cash is the primary limiting factor holding the research back."

It's disingenuous to dismiss cold fusion's difficulties as nothing more than a funding problem. Its biggest problem is the lack of reproducibility, even in the experiments of the most respected members of the cold fusion community. McKubre, for instance, admits to Weinberger that out of 50,000 hours of experiments, only 50 recorded instances have occurred that "unmistakably" produced excess heat. That's just not good enough. Science must maintain its integrity -- if only to counter the inevitable human frailties of its practitioners -- and that means we can't lower the bar of standards for reproducibility just because palladium is a "quixotic" metal, riddled with unpredictable, unevenly distributed impurities. Seriously, that's one of the main excuses given by cold fusion advocates as to why they get such inconsistent results. Materials issues are a bitch, experimentally, it's true, but cold fusion is not the only field faced with overcoming those challenges, so why should its experimental inconsistencies be excused on those grounds? 

As for that "excess heat," it's nothing to get excited about just yet, since it's a very small amount indeed. Anderson quotes cold fusionist Mitchell Swartz as saying the question now is not whether the experiments can generate excess heat, "It's can we can get a kilowatt? Can we get a small car moving on this stuff?" Heck, if they could just boil some water, that would be a tremendous accomplishment. The late Scottish physicist Douglas Morrison was one of the rare skeptical attendees of the annual cold fusion conferences until his death inn 2001. Each year, he would listen to the extravagant claims, then stand and make a simple request: "Please can I have a cup of tea?" It was a bit cheeky of him, but he made his point: cold fusion talks a good game, yet even the simplest applied energy task remains well beyond its reach.

And what of the implied vast scientific conspiracy to squelch further research and kill the field entirely (perhaps to ensure that the major investments in hot fusion research don't become obsolete)? The "evidence" for that is mostly  anecdotal hearsay -- i.e., not true evidence at all. Science undeniably has its politics, its bitter rivalries, petty jealousies, and its turf wars. There's some hefty egos involved, and feelings tend to run a bit high on both sides of the controversy. Scientists aren't always very polite in their disagreements, either. On the whole, though, cooler heads ultimately prevail in the public sphere, however much heated rhetoric is flung around in private.

I've personally heard physicists dismiss Hagelstein as an embarrassment to MIT. (Hagelstein has countered by describing the mainstream scientific community as a closed-minded "mafia," that only publishes the work of the official "family" of scientists.) Caltech physicist Steven Koonin famously denounced Pons and Fleischmann as "delusional" at an APS April meeting, and Princeton physicist Will Happer has described them as "incompetent boobs." Happer also objected strenuously to Robert Jahn's controversial PEAR project in psychic research, solely on scientific grounds. Yet he has repeatedly stated, on the record, that however much he disagreed with Jahn's science, he supported his right to conduct that research. I'll indulge in a bit of conjecture here myself: I suspect that despite Happer's harsh disdain for the scientific caliber of Pons and Fleischmann, and his skepticism of the validity of the field in general, he would still support the right of cold fusion scientists to conduct their research. (He just doesn't think the government needs to pay for it.)

The ever-irascible Bob Park, author of Voodoo Science and editor of the weekly electronic newsletter, What's New, has been one of the fiercest of cold fusion's often-vitriolic critics. Yet he has corresponded with many cold fusion scientists over the years, and welcomed the second DOE review. He still thinks it's most likely a bunch of bad science, but conceded to the WaPo, "Maybe there is... some funny reaction going on.... If there is, it may solve some puzzles, but it won't be important." Also quoted is Hagelstein's MIT colleague, Milly Dresselhaus: "I think scientists should be open-minded. Historically, many things get overturned with time." She stops short of recommending federal funding, however, especially in these cash-strapped times: "When you feel poor, you don't invest in long shots. This is kind of a long shot."

Cold fusion has had its day in court, so to speak, not once, but twice, and some skeptical scientists have been willing to listen to a few of the more reputable claims. Garwin was a member of the 1989 DOE review panel, and subsequently visited McKubre's lab at SRI in 1993. Far from dismissing the work outright, he praised the lab for its "serious and competent work," and found no huge blunder in the experimental setups. (That's something that sets McKubre's work apart from the vast majority of cold fusion experiments, which caused Garwin to gripe to the WaPo, "People who can't do a good sophomore experiment are suddenly free to suggest that the discrepancies in their results come from unexplained, basic, earth-shaking, heat-producing phenomena.") But he did identify any number of possible problems with the setup, as well as some measurement errors, concluding bluntly, "Did not support any finding of 'excess heat.'"

In short, individual scientists might have indulged in harsh derision about cold fusion over the years, and promising young physicists like Hagelstein have indeed paid a professional price for their choice of research. (Note that it was Hagelstein's choice.) That doesn't amount to a cabal-like conspiracy n the part of the scientific establishment -- a notion that provides the linchpin of an emerging "cold fusion mythology" being fostered by -- among other things -- unquestioning articles in popular science magazines, and it has little basis in reality. The scientific community as a whole has not unfairly dismissed the claims: it simply remains unconvinced by the erratic evidence that has been presented to it. Should cold fusion advocates one day beat the odds and provide truly reproducible, compelling evidence for low-energy nuclear reactions, the stodgy old scientific establishment might grumble a bit, but ultimately it will accept those findings and alter its theories accordingly. Because that's what the scientific method is all about.

Perhaps the most telling anecdote comes at the end of the WaPo article, where McKubre cites the multiple pop culture references to cold fusion as evidence that cold fusion is losing its stigma as a suspect pseudoscience. In fictional worlds, he insists, cold fusion is a fact. "It's a fantasy fact. That's nearly as good as reality." Here's a free media-savvy tip for scientists: That's the kind of  inane statement you never want to make on the record to a reporter, particularly when you're being grilled about a controversial subject like cold fusion. In this case, it serves no purpose other than to lend credence to Park's assertion earlier in the article that cold fusion's advocates want to believe the world is a certain way, when there simply isn't sufficient evidence to support what they so dearly want to believe.

I like science fiction and fantasy as much as the next person, and I'll be the first to trumpet the fact that real world science feeds off sci-fi to design new technologies and gain inspiration, before inspiring sci-fi authors with new fundamental breakthroughs that spark their creativity in turn. It's the perfect symbiotic relationship. But that's a far cry from claiming that because something is "real" in a cartoon universe, it's only a matter of time before real-world scientists make similar breakthroughs.  While writing The Physics of the Buffyverse, I concluded that the most basic mechanism in that fictional world was an infinite supply of extra "mystical energy" that allowed for phenomena that would be impossible in our universe. But I didn't extrapolate that observation to conclude that someday we, too, would have access to a similar energy source and scientists just needed to identify it and figure out how to tap into it. Because the Buffyverse is a fantasy world, and we don't live in a fantasy world. Quod erat demonstratum, or, more colloquially: Duh, squared.

Comments

[Jed Rothwell]

This article has many factually incorrect statements and misperceptions. Let me list some. I shall try to avoid nitpicking:

"It's an equally accepted maxim that the more potentially revolutionary the result, the greater the burden of proof: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence in order to be accepted by the scientific community. And cold fusion was a truly extraordinary claim."

This maxim was coined a few decades ago by Carl Sagan. It is not accepted by all scientists by any means, and it violates traditional scientific criteria. Cold fusion researchers feel that extraordinary claims are best supported with ordinary evidence from off-the-shelf instruments and standard techniques, and this is the kind of evidence they have published. They also feel that all claims, and all arguments (including skeptical assertions that attempt to disprove cold fusion) must be held to the same standards of rigor.

"Pons and Fleischmann, for whatever reason, ignored the established protocol and jumped right into the public domain, announcing their results in a March 23 press conference . . ."

A paper by Fleischmann and Pons was in print before the press conference. See:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanelectroche.pdf

"First, thou shalt not announce thy results via a press conference. Second, thou shalt not exaggerate the results. Third, thou shalt tell other scientists precisely what thou did. They broke all of those rules."

Researchers in other areas, especially plasma fusion, routinely announce results immediately following experiments, sometimes months before they publish papers. Fleischmann and Pons were not able to tell other scientists precisely what they did because they did not fully understand experiment yet.

"Eventually they published a full-length (over 50 pages!) paper with all of the necessary details, but it was rushed, sloppy, and contained at least one egregious error concerning their analysis of the gamma ray spectra."

The paper (listed above) is 7 pages, not 50. There is an egregious error regarding gamma ray spectra, but dozens of subsequent papers confirmed gamma rays without errors. Fleischmann, Pons and their colleagues later published roughly 50 papers, including many in the peer-reviewed literature.

"It has a handful of supporters among scientists, but the field boasts a far greater number of crackpots who inevitably undermine the rare occasions when a bona fide result is obtained in such experiments."

Where did you get this information? Have you counted the authors and checked their institutions? My database shows over 3,000 authors, most of them from accredited universities, national laboratories and corporations. Many of them are distinguished scientists. They include, for example, Nobel laureate Julian Schwinger; Heinz Gerischer, the Director of the Max Planck Institute for Physical Chemistry in Berlin; Dr. P. K. Iyengar, director of BARC and later chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission; Prof. Melvin Miles, Fellow of China Lake; three editors of major plasma fusion and physics journals; a retired member of the French Atomic Energy Commission, and many top researchers from U.S. national laboratories.

"The problem was, hundreds of researchers all over the world scurried to reproduce the experiments, and invariably failed."

There is no evidence that hundreds of researchers all the world attempted to replicate this experiment. There are rumors to that effect, but most of these rumors trace back to one or two universities in the United States. If hundreds did attempt to replicate, they never documented their work. On the other hand, hundreds of other groups did succeed in replicating and they did document their work. There were meetings in 1989 and 1990 that included roughly 100 research groups mainly from mainstream institutions such as the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division at China Lake, Amoco, SRI, Texas A&M, Los Alamos, Mitsubishi Res. Center, and BARC Bombay. By September 12, 1990, 92 groups in major laboratories reported replications. See: Will, F.G., Groups Reporting Cold Fusion Evidence. 1990, National Cold Fusion Institute: Salt Lake City, UT.:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/WillFGgroupsrepo.pdf

"By the end of 1989, a panel of experts had conducted a Department of Energy review of the matter, and concluded there was no basis for the claims. As far as mainstream science was concerned, that was the final nail in cold fusion's coffin."

Cold fusion researchers consider this ERAB report highly prejudiced for many reasons. It was concluded in a rush long before there was time to perform and publish serious replications. The authors dismissed experimental evidence by pointing to theory, which is a violation of the scientific method. And they selectively ignored positive data. For example, ERAB report authors visited Dr. Melvin Miles at the China Lake Naval Weapons Laboratory when he had just begun experiments in cold fusion. He told them he had not observed excess heat or other evidence of fusion. Months later, he did observe significant heat. He contacted the authors. He informed them of his results and invited them to return. They ignored him and reported only his initial, negative results.

"It's tough not to admire the steely resolve of cold fusion advocates, who have faced derision, suffered in their careers, and labored to build their own scientific enterprise from scratch: their own meetings, their own journals, their own community."

Cold fusion does not have its own journal. All papers on the subject have either been published in mainstream peer-reviewed journals or conference proceedings. Cold fusion researchers have suffered in their careers.

"I find Anderson's use of the word "canon" here interesting; it implies that something is established beyond question, which cold fusion most certainly is not."

The signal-to-noise ratio in many of these papers is high and the experiments have been independently replicated hundreds of times. Therefore by the standards of experimental science the claim is proved beyond question.

"More to the point, this is a misleading statement, since very few of those 3000 papers were published in peer-reviewed journals. Certainly some of them were, but this fact should be noted, even just in passing."

Roughly 500 were published in mainstream, long-established peer-reviewed journals. This is based on a quick tally of papers in English in journals that have published many papers on cold fusion such as: Fusion Technol., J. Appl. Electrochem., J. Electrochem. Soc., Proc. Electrochem. Soc., Jap. J. Appl. Physics. Roughly 2500 others appear in conference proceedings and non-peer-reviewed journals. The total is 3,439 but several of these are not Journal papers. You can see the list here:

http://lenr-canr.org/LibraryGuide.html

This list is incomplete. It does not include several hundred papers in Chinese and Japanese.

"And don't just take my word for it. Per WaPo's Weinberger, '[T]he most credible cold fusion advocates concede that the vast majority of those papers are of poor quality." She even cites a supporter who calls the collection of papers 'toxic waste.' That's hardly a resounding endorsement; it certainly wouldn't qualify as a 'canon.'"

Many cold fusion researchers disagree with this characterization. In any case, new areas of research often include many mistakes, and experts often dismiss most papers in an academic field as being substandard.

"Cold fusion's claims of verification are based on a bizarre kind of statistical rationale: sure, most of the results are negative, but they have now amassed such a statistically significant sampling of instances of claimed excess heat that at least some of those results must be valid . . ."

This is completely incorrect. The statement is true of many areas of physics, such as top quark research at Fermilab, but in cold fusion data is based on stand-alone runs with high signal-to-noise ratios for individual runs. McKubre's initial experiments failed to produce heat except on 50 occasions with many no runs, but with many other techniques – including McKubre's more recent experiments – the success rate is much higher.

Many cold fusion research experiments, such as those conducted by Iwamura et al (Mitsubishi and the National Synchrotron Laboratory) work 100% of the time. These experiments have been performed dozens of times over the past 14 years and they have produced a positive result in every run. (Each run of this particular experiment takes a few months so it can only be conducted several times a year.)

"Its biggest problem is the lack of reproducibility, even in the experiments of the most respected members of the cold fusion community."

This is incorrect, as noted above.

"McKubre, for instance, admits to Weinberger that out of 50,000 hours of experiments, only 50 recorded instances have occurred that "unmistakably" produced excess heat. That's just not good enough."

As noted, McKubre's replication rate is much higher now. However, if poor reproducibility is taken as a criterion to reject results, you must reject the top quark, many plasma fusion results, cloning mammals (which works less than 0.1% of the time), and semiconductor production before 1955, which failed roughly 90% of the time for many types of devices. This makes no scientific sense.

"And what of the implied vast scientific conspiracy to squelch further research and kill the field entirely (perhaps to ensure that the major investments in hot fusion research don't become obsolete)? The "evidence" for that is mostly anecdotal hearsay -- i.e., not true evidence at all."

There is no conspiracy. A conspiracy is defined as a surreptitious organized effort. Mainstream opposition to cold fusion is not secret and it is not organized. It is practiced quite openly. The evidence is well documented, and letters from the patent office, letters from universities and the Navy ordering its researchers not to publish results or attend conferences, attacks published in major magazines and newspapers, comments published by the Department of Energy and so on. See, for example:

http://lenr-canr.org/Collections/DoeReview.htm

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/LENRCANRthedoelies.pdf

"The ever-irascible Bob Park, author of Voodoo Science and editor of the weekly electronic newsletter, What's New, has been one of the fiercest of cold fusion's often-vitriolic critics. Yet he has corresponded with many cold fusion scientists over the years, and welcomed the second DOE review."

Park told McKubre, I, and several others that he is not read any papers on cold fusion but he is certain that all papers are incorrect. His comments on the subject confirm that he knows nothing about it. All of his assertions are factually and scientifically wrong.

"The scientific community as a whole has not unfairly dismissed the claims: it simply remains unconvinced by the erratic evidence that has been presented to it."

The scientific community as a whole has not read the peer-reviewed literature. Most critics of this subject – like Park – have not read any papers on the subject, they have not addressed the technical issues, and they know nothing about the instruments, techniques, the signal-to-noise ratio or any other detail. Therefore their opinions have no merit. A person cannot learn about cold fusion by ESP or by guessing but only by reading the actual scientific papers.

"Should cold fusion advocates one day beat the odds and provide truly reproducible, compelling evidence for low-energy nuclear reactions, the stodgy old scientific establishment might grumble a bit, but ultimately it will accept those findings and alter its theories accordingly. Because that's what the scientific method is all about."

Breakthroughs throughout history have met with irrational hostility that often lasts for years or decades, despite overwhelming evidence that the breakthrough is real. In public health, for example, there was famous opposition to hygiene (Semmelweis); pasteurization; studies showing the sex-specific effects of AIDS in women; and the fact that helicobacter causes stomach ulcers. Pasteurization was discovered in the 1860s, but pasteurization of milk was not made mandatory in New York City until 1917, when the U.S. army demanded that soldiers be given safe milk.

I suggest you review the literature more carefully. Our website, LENR-CANR.org, includes a bibliography of 3,500 papers and the full text from over 500 papers, including papers from all of the authors and institutions listed above.

Sincerely,

Jed Rothwell
Librarian, LENR-CANR.org

[Jed Rothwell]

The author and I both made a mistake in the messages above. The initial Fleischmann paper error was in neutron detection, not the gamma ray spectra. I should have said "neutrons were later confirmed in dozens of other experiments." Gamma emissions have also been confirmed. Tritium, excess heat, helium commensurate with the excess heat, heavy element transmutations, and other nuclear effects have been widely confirmed. Some other claimed nuclear effects have not been widely replicated, and remain tentative.

- Jed Rothwell
Librarian, LENR-CANR.org

[Jennifer Ouellette]

And the cold fusion zealouts waste no time weighing in, because anything that attempts to lend a dose of reality to their claims MUST, by definition, be "riddled with errors." Seriously, folks, if you want to supply links to your lengthy counter-arguments, that's fine, but please, this is not the place to try and drown readers by listing all your claimed "accumulated evidence." Write your own damn blog post. I tried to provide a few links to pro and con sites, but it's hardly exhaustive. Anyone interested in the technical specifics, counter-arguments, etc., can certainly follow those links, or check out the links at the end of the lengthy Wikipedia entry. And I'm sure Mr. Rothwell would be delighted to enlighten you further via email. :)

[Frank Znidarsic]

Fusion involves high energies. This energy is greater than 20 kiloelectron volts per particle. Cold fusion proceeds at low energies. Room temperature energy is less than one electron volt per particle. Main stream scientists have rejected cold fusion on the basis that it is energetically impossible.

Low temperature physics is assumed to be complete. It is not. It cannot describe the path of the quantum transition. Cold fusion is a transition quantum technology. It provides information on the path of the quantum transition. This value of this information goes beyond cold fusion. The observables produced by cold fusion experiments may enable man to classically control all of the natural forces.

[Lonny Eachus]

Shame on you, Jennifer. If you don't want to read contradictory comments like the one by Mr. Rothwell above, then (1) refuse to allow comments on the site, or (2) don't write such irresponsible articles. But because in fact you did both, you actually invited that response. You were out of line to then insult Mr. Rothwell, whose citation and reference resources are so clearly superior to your own.

My own point is along a different line: Why has cold fusion research been so vilified, when it HAS demonstrated some results by reputable researchers in their respective fields, even if the results have not been consistently reproducible? You mention youself that there have been at least 50 "unmistakable" cases of excess heat generation. It would not be proper science to then say that those 50 cases out of 50,000 hours are statistically insignificant... because they are not. Not only would that be improper use of statistics (changing the measure in the middle of the calculation), it would also reflect a lack of understanding of the science involved. For example, if such an improper statistical argument were to be given merit, then the neutrinos detected by our best detectors would have to be called nonexistent, and could only be mere "statistical glitches". I think researchers in the field would disagree, and rightly so.

Now compare this whole cold fusion situation to the field of AI research. This field has been given lavish and even constant "mainstream" scientific and media attention, and consistent funding, when it has NEVER produced ANY measurable results of any sort! Yet we seldom see armchair scientists like Jennifer berating the researchers in this field, who have invariably claimed that a breakthrough is just around the corner, while never -- even once -- producing same.

And I mean that. Even the best, most celebrated chess-playing machine to date -- which is very good indeed and could be called the poster child for AI today -- is in principle nothing more than a calculator. A very big, very fast calculator on steroids, I will grant... but just a calculator. There is nothing about its processing or software that could honestly be said to be "AI" in any meaningful way, at all, in any measure.

I am not insulting the hardware or software engineers who are involved with chess-playing computers. Their work has been excellent. But even today, there is nothing about it that could honestly be called AI.

Yet the field of "AI Research" had been around since long before cold fusion claims. Decades longer. With MUCH less to show for itself. There have been no major breakthroughs even though they have always been "next month, maybe next year". Yet... this field and its results, shameful as they are, have not been attacked as cold fusion has been.

Can anyone provide an explanation for this hypocrisy? I certainly do not understand it. It seems to me that fields of endeavor that show some actual promise and even results, no matter how thin, should be given more legitimate attention than those that do not. Especially when they offer much more short-term promise to the human condition.

[Lonny Eachus]

I almost forgot to add:

Your "appeal to authority", re: your stated reliance on peer-reviewed journals, may be misplaced.

A new study has concluded that as many as 90% of research articles that have appeared in just such peer-reviewed journals in recent years have subsequently been invalidated.

Apologies; I do not have the reference at hand, but I have seen it. If I turn it up, I will be happy to post it here.

[Jennifer Ouellette]

Astute readers will note that I have only deleted one comment -- the third time Mr. Rothwell tried to comment, which I felt was excessive. For the record, I will not allow someone to highjack my blog to get on their personal soapbox. It's my blog, and MY soapbox. :) It's a big Internet out there, and Mr. Rothwell (and others like him) is welcome to start his OWN blog if he feels the need to over-react to the slightest bit of skepticism towards the claims of his chosen field. Then he can wail and gnash his teeth and question my competence and integrity all he likes.

The post was a critique of the media coverage of cold fusion, NOT an invitation to discuss the pros and cons of the field's merits. (And less biased readers would also note that my take is reasonably well-balanced, regardless.) There's plenty of other places for that if you're just spoiling for a fight. I have made it clear that this is NOT the place for that. Please respect it.

[Lonny Eachus]

Well, pardon me for multiple posts, too. But you could have fooled me. The article certainly appeared to me to be a critique of the entire field, and not "balanced" at all. Perhaps that reflects some kind of misreading on my part of your choice of phrasing, but it is apparent that if so, I am not the only person who got that impression.

I am not defending cold fusion or the researchers. I thought it was pretty clear that my own point is that much research that is outside the mainstream seems to be treated differently by the media and the scientific community, even to the point that some of it seems to get re-defined as "mainstream" due to its popularity, even when research in the field has shown no merit whatever. My intent was only to point out this very inequality. I did not intend to engage in an argument of any sort.

However, I am still of the opinion that the very fact that you wrote that article, in the way you wrote it, and allowed public comments, could be construed as "trolling" for exactly the kind of comment that Mr. Rothwell posted.

[Janet Leslie Blumberg]

Wow, Jennifer. You really hit a nerve, it seems. This is a fascinating spectacle for us, the REST of your readers, who appreciate you deeply for your fabulous, upbeat, entertaining, informed, and VERY good-natured blog.

[Jennifer Ouellette]

Lonnie: I appreciate your viewpoint. Everyone brings their own subjective biases to bear when reading. But the post is pretty straightforward in its intent. It begins by discussing the lack of any kind of skepticism in the Wired article, and proceeds to tell an alternate "story" of cold fusion to demonstrate that the situation isn't as cut and dried as that -- an alternate story that is readily accessible from any number of respectable sources online, duly hyperlinked. I acknowledge that there are a handful of researchers doing solid work in this area, they just haven't yet convinced the majority of their colleagues -- and they have trouble being taken seriously because they ally themselves with some very questionable characters. I don't think cold fusion it a joke. I think it's a riveting tale of how human frailty can adversely affect the pursuit of science, in lots of different ways: self-delusion as to what one is (or isn't) seeing in one's experimental results, being too quick to reject/deride new ideas, etc. Nobody involved in the cold fusion controversy is beyond reproach; that's what makes it so compelling. If cold fusion comes up with truly convincing evidence in the future, I will happily join the mean nasty scientific establishment in altering my views accordingly. Until then, I stand by the post.

I never "troll." Ever. The mere fact of writing a post on a topic I find of passing interest does not equate trolling. I also moderate comments with a very light hand; it's a very rare occasion when I delete a comment that isn't obvious SPAM, and in general, I think I have some of the best regular commenters on the Internet. They're terrific: I love it when they correct tiny errors in my posts, because that's how I learn. Nonetheless, it's my prerogative to delete as I see fit; usually I do so as a means of directing the conversation. In Mr. Rothwell's case, he was showing classic signs of the zealot with no sense of boundaries who runs on and on with lengthy multiple comments, sometimes footnoted, refuting every single imagined slight by claiming "factual inaccuracy" :) -- a practice which quickly becomes tedious to both me and many of my readers. So after two comments, I started deleting him. He is also, BTW, extremely biased, being in charge of one of the main repositories of cold fusion papers. When it comes to critiques of my posts, I always consider the source.

Why talk about cold fusion at all? Because it demonstrates how science works, or doesn't work, and how it can go horribly wrong when egos and rivalries and such impinge on the process. I'm not out to convince anyone to accept or reject the field, merely to lay out the "story" as I see it, having watched it unfold over the last 20 years. nobody has to take my opinion as gospel. If people decide they want to learn more, they can follow the various links to do their own exploration and reach their own conclusions. Who knows, maybe Mr. Rothwell will get some converts out of it all...

[Lonny Eachus]

I can appreciate what you say. I should point out, however, that I am rather new to the site, and was not aware of any deletion at all until you mentioned it above, after my initial post. So I was not responding to your having delete anything, only to the posts that I saw. So there might have been a misunderstanding, but please understand how it looked to me:

(1) You wrote an article that, despite some mention of differing points of view, is decidedly one-sided. (It is not my intent to argue the merits of one "side" or the other... only to point out that your position was obvious.) This article was written on a *public* blog.

(2) You allow public comments to this public blog.

(3) So then, it appeared to me (being ignorant of multiple or run-on posts), that you were then berating a respondent, merely for taking your bait. And that did not seem quite fair.

Just explaining my comment... it is indeed your blog, and I was not aware of all the circumstances.

[Jed Rothwell]

Your bias is not at issue. Your assertions are factually wrong:

No author has ever claimed to have "amassed . . . a statistically significant sampling of instances" of excess heat. All claims are based on individual instances of heat production. (On single experimental runs, in other words.)

There are no journals dedicated to cold fusion research; all original research has been published in existing peer-reviewed journals or conference proceedings.

There is not a shred of evidence that "hundreds of laboratories" failed to replicate in 1989.

And so on . . .

As Moynahan put it, you are entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts.

You may have read these claims in newspapers and magazine articles, but the actual scientific literature proves they are incorrect. When you write about scientific research, I think you should base your statements on the literature and other original sources, rather than newspaper reports.

- Jed Rothwell
Librarian, LENR-CANR.org

[Jennifer Ouellette]

Seeing as how the point of the post was the media coverage of the issue, the focus on media sources was perfectly appropriate.

[Steven V Johnson]

Granted, this blog belongs to Blumberg and she has every right to edit follow-up comments as she sees fit.

As for my own two cents:

Ironically, it strikes me as a bias reaction on Blumberg part to assume Mr. Rothwell must be "...extremely biased" simply because he is "...in charge of one of the main repositories of cold fusion papers." It's my understanding that while Mr. Rothwell's title is that of "librarian" who manages the on-line repository the site is actually managed by two individuals, Mr. Rothwell and Dr. Edmond Storms. Dr. Storms, now retired, had a 34 year career as a radiochemist at Los Alamos National Laboratory which included 18 years in cold fusion science. Dr. Storms has recently published a long overdue book on the fascinating subject of cold fusion, a subject he obviously has accumulated years of personal experience in researching.

For a brief interview on Dr. Storms see:

http://www.infinite-energy.com/images/pdfs/stormsinterview.pdf

At what point does being a librarian who manages a collection of scientific research papers make them "bias"? How does that work! If Blumberg suspects Rothwell shows signs of being bias it seems to me that she would also have to apply the same set of personal standards (personal opinions), perhaps even more harshly, towards Dr. Storms activities because of his 18 years of cold fusion research. Which begs the question: What criteria is actually being used here on librarians (and perhaps research scientists as well) with all their accumulated experience on this subject, making their opinions bias, their contributions dismissible?

But then it gets personal. Well, who is perfect, certainly not me! I note that Blumberg goes farther in her analysis of Rothwell, stating he shows "...classic signs of a zealot with no sense of boundaries..." It seems to me that when someone like Mr. Rothwell makes the effort to meticulously correct several misrepresentations and factual inaccuracies made by others like Blumberg, at worst, their efforts may be considered an annoyance by the individual whose recent work is being challenged. In so far as Mr. Rothwell and his librarian duties are concerned, I suspect he takes his librarian work seriously. Who better than a librarian to KNOW when factual inaccuracies are being made in regards to a subject they have spent years accumulating data on. OTOH, Analyzing Rothwell's responses, classifying them as belonging to that of a "zealot" in my view ironically digs the author, Blumberg, only deeper into a bias laden hole dug themselves.

Steven V Johnson
www.OrionWorks.com

[Jennifer Ouellette]

This blog does not "belong to Blumberg," a regular reader who left a two-sentence comment some time back.

[Nick Palmer]

This comment was made in the blog - "McKubre, for instance, admits to Weinberger that out of 50,000 hours of experiments, only 50 recorded instances have occurred that "unmistakably" produced excess heat. That's just not good enough". This shows a misunderstanding of reality. Actually, only one UNMISTAKABLE incidence of excess heat in 50,000 to the power of ten trillion hours of experiments is enough to establish the reality of the effect beyond doubt. The blogger confuses the sad state of what passes for some scientific judgement these days, with something worthy of respect. Unfortunately, science by weight of numbers of people's beliefs seems to give more weight to those prejudices and less to OBJECTIVE reality...

[Andrew Ward]

Jennifer,
I have no dog in this fight. (While I'd love to have Mr Fusion on my desk, I'm not holding my breath.) But I am puzzled by this:

--- snip ---
'McKubre, for instance, admits to Weinberger that out of 50,000 hours of experiments, only 50 recorded instances have occurred that "unmistakably" produced excess heat. That's just not good enough.'
--- snip ---

How many "unmistakable" events are "good enough" to allow further research without ridicule? The history of science is replete with examples of experiments that worked erratically, until the hidden variable was exposed.

It may be likely that those "unmistakable" events were, in fact, mistaken. It's also possible (albeit unlikely) that they are the result of some unrecognized differences between the runs.

Leaving aside the snake oil that unsettled science attracts, where is the shame in trying to determine what underlies the events?

A W

[Steven V. Johnson]

Jennifer,

You posted:

'This blog does not "belong to Blumberg," a regular reader who left a two-sentence comment some time back.'

I now see my mistake. My apologies,

The way the formatting of this blog is laid out I mistook the "posted by" name as belonging to the text below – what is written between two horizontal lines. Visually speaking that looks like a block of text, including the "Posted by" name posted above.

As stated before, even I make mistakes! ;-)

Steven V Johnson
www.OrionWorks.com

[Nashville Bill]

So -- can I have a cup of tea yet? :)

[Jed Rothwell]

A. W. wrote:

"It may be likely that those 'unmistakable' events were, in fact, mistaken."

That is extremely unlikely, because similar events have been replicated in over 180 other laboratories, and because the events can now be replicated far more often; close to 100% of the time by McKubre and others. Furthermore, tritium, helium, neutrons, gamma rays, transmutations and other nuclear effects are also measured. A mistake in calorimetry cannot cause mistakes in tritium detection or mass spectroscopy. (Some instrument types can interfere with one-another, but not these.)

"It's also possible (albeit unlikely) that they are the result of some unrecognized differences between the runs."

The differences between the runs was readily observable, and described by McKubre, Storms and others in detail. In runs that did not produce excess heat, the loading, OCV, current density, flux and other necessary conditions could not be achieved. Whenever they were achieved, excess heat was always produced. In other words, the effect is 100% reproducible when the known control parameters reach certain levels, but it has been very difficult to push the parameters up to these levels. (It is now considerably easier.)

As McKubre explained: "We observe a lack of reproducibility among replicates which we ascribe to metallurgical, chemical, or physical differences presently beyond our control."

In many of the failed experiments, the problem is apparent even to naked eye. The cathodes bend and crack apart under the tremendous pressure of high loading. See: Storms, E., How to produce the Pons-Fleischmann effect. Fusion Technol., 1996. 29: p. 261.

Nashville Bill asked:

"So -- can I have a cup of tea yet?"

No, but if you have $20 million, a team of experts, and one of the world's largest synchrotrons I can show you how to use cold fusion to transmute elements in nearly macroscopic amounts, with 100% reproducibility. That research may, with time, reveal enough of the mechanism to allow a cup of tea.

Cold fusion is much more difficult than people imagine. The newspapers often describe it as "simple" experiment. I have seen many experiments in person, and read about hundreds of others, and I have yet to see one that I would describe as "simple" or "easy." It is roughly as difficult as making your own semiconductor from scratch.

- Jed Rothwell
Librarian, LENR-CANR.org

[Kristen]

Hi Jennifer,

I was Mark Anderson's editor on the Wired News article you refer to. I saw the piece as a glimpse into a world where a group of aging researchers refuse to give up on something that the rest of the world has. We never intended to be boosters for cold fusion. We describe the specious 1989 claims, the dearth of reproducible results and the general derision cold fusion researchers receive from other scientists. We also never intended to, and I don't think we have, implied as you suggest some kind of mainstream science conspiracy to discredit cold fusion.

Now that I see the nerve the article struck, I realize we should have inserted more skepticism. At the very least we should have included the voice of someone who strongly refuted cold fusion. So I've written a post on our Wired Science blog (blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/08/cocktail-party-.html) linking to your post, and linked to the WS post from Anderson's original story.

Best regards,
Kristen Philipkoski

[Jed Rothwell]

Kristen Philipkoski described the "the dearth of reproducible results."

There is no such dearth. The cold fusion effect has been replicated in hundreds of world-class laboratories, and these replications have been published in leading peer-reviewed journals. When other experimental findings are replicated hundreds of times, no one says there is a "dearth" of evidence. Findings such as high temperature superconducting and cloning mammals were accepted long before 100 replications were reported.

"Now that I see the nerve the article struck, I realize we should have inserted more skepticism."

Skepticism based on what? Rumors? The opinions of people who know nothing about the research? I suggest you ignore the "nerve" that has been struck and stick to the peer-reviewed scientific literature. You will find hundreds of papers proving that cold fusion does exist, and also 5 or 10 papers written by skeptics who have tried to find errors in the experiments to prove cold fusion does not exist. Compare the two sets of papers and decide which is right.

You will find most of the skeptical papers at LENR-CANR.org, because we strive to be fair and to represent all points of view. See the ERAB report and papers by Jones and Morrison. Outside of our library, see the book by Huizenga. In my opinion the skeptical arguments have no merit, but I invite you to read them and judge for yourself.

- Jed Rothwell
Librarian, LENR-CANR.org

[Chris Clarke]

Jennifer;

Boy, this takes me back to the good old days at Earth Island Journal, fending off the chemtrails and perpetual motion machine folks and the like.

I'm not certain I wanted to go back, but oh well.

[Chris Clarke]

And after posting the above, I clicked over to Mr. Rothwell's site and saw that familiar "Infinite Energy" logo. Shudder.

[Old Fusion Fan]

Ah, good old Jed Rothwell, wrong as always. The Pons and Fleischman paper was not "in print" at the time of the press conference. It had just been accepted and the accepted version was reportedly not the one that was finally published (in May, as I recall). Details of that particular history are clearly documented in Frank Close's book, which is a must read by anyone interested in that period of time. Frank Close shows the original gamma ray figure, which has the peak at the wrong energy. [See pp 97, 115, 150, and 166, which shows that the shape is also wrong.] That first figure has always been the most interesting part of the entire story.

Jed, does your library include the figure of the "gamma ray data" from the original 13 March 1989 preprint? Your library lacks historical value until it contains the original preprint and the revised version sent on 22 March as well as a copy of the published paper and its astounding set of errata. [How many scientists have seen a paper where one of the three authors was left off and had to added in an erratum?]

The paper that was "in print", in that it had actually been printed, was the abstract of Steve Jones' invited talk at the APS meeting in Baltimore. Similarly, the strongest defense of a patent would not be a press conference but the notarized description of a planned experiment that existed in Steve Jones' lab notebook. Pons and Fleischman held the press conference to do an end run around their gentleman's agreement with Steve Jones on joint submission of papers to Nature, which they thought had been violated by his APS abstract, hence their "preliminary note" to JEChem.

Anyone who knows that will also know the statement in the Wired article "Today's understanding of nuclear fusion, which involves the synthesis of two hydrogens to make one helium in an energy-creating reaction, doesn't allow for the type of reaction reported in 1989." is false as well as being "not even wrong". (Synthesis of two hydrogens? Nonsense.) There were several papers, and even a Scientific American article, explaining how it might be done.

Jed, where is the water heater they promised us by Christmas of 1989?

The central problem in Cold Fusion is that the proponents cannot tell you how to build something that will produce a certain amount of excess heat every time, and where you will get 10x the heat if you scale it up by a factor of 10, again in a way that they can describe in detail. They get "results" once in a while, but they seem to end up like the Wizard of Oz and his balloon: "I don't know how it works!" As others noted in the discussion, there are plenty of examples in science where an uncontrolled parameter produced "results" that were not what they appeared to be at first. The two key steps in science are (1) you can make the experiment work exactly the same way every time and (2) you can tell someone else how to do it and make it work the same way every time. Cold Fusion ran into trouble at step 1. Pons and Fleischman could not deliver on the prototype commercial hot water heater they promised us by the end of 1989. As a result, most of those "replication" attempts were actually variations on several different experiments as people tried (and still try) to find and control the unknown variables. Which is what they should do.

Jed also makes conflicting claims about what McKubre has actually done. Amazingly, the success rate of McKubre's experiments grows from "much higher" to "100%", although the reader will note that it is 100% when it works a certain way, but Jed says it does not work that way 100% of the time even when the experiment is done exactly the same way. Since that means it is not fully reproducible, Jed supports what Jennifer said in her article. (I recommend that you read McKubre's papers if you are interested in what McKubre has done. McKubre makes very precise scientific statements in his papers.)

A PS to Frank Znidarsic:
Look up muon catalyzed fusion and the theoretical work on what might happen (at an extremely low rate, not of any practical value) in the solid state. The work before 1989 contains flaws, but refined calculations (see Koonin and others) says there is no reason it should be zero. The sensitivity of nuclear detection methods allow one to see effects with very small signatures.

A PS to Steven Johnson:
Jed has been a true believer in cold fusion since Day 1, and his approach to this topic has always emphasized rhetoric over reality. Look no further than his dismissal of the observation about the number of scientists, both physicists and electrochemists (sometimes teams involving both at the same time), who attempted to replicate the experiment in 1989. There were a dozen at my university alone, and more than a dozen teams reported their negative results at the Baltimore APS meeting. A prime example of zealotry at work is his preposterous assertion that the top quark cannot be observed in a reproducible fashion. Another example of his zealotry is the silly attack on Jennifer about the length of the actual full paper, which Jed confuses with the Preliminary Note. The Preliminary Note, like its name says, promised a later paper that would document its claims in detail. You can see it references in the Note. That later paper is quite long, yet lacks any mention of some important claims in the Note.

Perhaps Jed's highlight is when he claims that hundreds of researchers had done confirming experiments and that 100 groups attended a meeting in 1989, while asserting that the DOE ERAB report could not be correct because there had not been "time to perform and publish serious replications" before the end of 1989. Of course, you don't see him say that all of those 100 groups that attended a 1989 meeting had gotten the same results as Pons and Fleischman, or that all of those "confirmations" were sent to journals in 1989 or 1990.