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Comment by brudgers | Hacker News Reader

I remember Fleishmann and Pons announcement back in the late 80's - personally, the gross theory of bringing together Deuterium atoms close enough to create fusion using a catalytic surface still seems plausible to me,even if their experimental results were never supported at "a university without a division I football team."

Of course, I am probably biased because back in '89 I did my first presentation using computer generated materials on the subject for a Science Education course - overheads printed with my StarMicronix NX1000 from images generated with EA Deluxe Paint on the Amiga 500.

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The difference though is that F&P were real scientists who simply happened to be wrong. They published their work in a way that could be replicated, and those experiments found their results were in error. They were shamed and embarassed, but they played by the rules and were doing real science.

This nonsense is pure charlatanry and fraud. An "inventor" working alone and discovering new fundamental physics without published results or peer review needs to be viewed far more suspiciously.

Actually, Pons and Flesciemann announced their results at a press conference prior to publication, which was extremely detrimental to their credibility without regard to the validity of their science.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion#Announcement

I remember seeing an interview with one of them and he claimed that he never wanted to do that announcement. Rather, he was pushed into it by the University and was probably more responsible for ruining his career than the experiment not working.

As for the experiment, as I recall it did produce neutrons, an expected byproduct of fusion. There was certainly an interesting reaction going on but it turned out that it wasn't fusion.

I remember being so excited that my brother and I skipped school and "snuck in" to the ACS meeting in Dallas. This was after their first announcement, but they came and gave a big talk to a packed hall. I seem to recall it was hurriedly put together because of all the interest. At the time I thought I was witnessing a huge historical event. I guess I was in the history-of-science sense at least.

Stanford and Cal not good enough?

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