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"Tabletop" Fusion Researcher Committed Scientific Misconduct
Geoffrey.landis writes "A Purdue University panel investigated allegations against nuclear engineering professor Rusi Taleyarkhan, finding that he had in fact committed scientific misconduct in his work.
Taleyarkhan had published papers in which he reported seeing evidence of nuclear fusion in the collapse of tiny bubbles in a liquid subjected to ultrasonic excitation — a finding that would be groundbreaking, if true, but one that apparently could not be replicated by other researchers. The allegations against Taleyarkhan were made in March of 2006. A local Indiana paper gives the full list of allegations against Taleyarkhan, and the resolution of each by the panel. The full report (PDF) is also available. Of the nine specific allegations, only two were found to comprise scientific misconduct. The committee 'could not find any other instances of scientists being able to replicate Taleyarkhan's results without Taleyarkhan having direct involvement with the experiments,' but notes that this comes 'just short of questioning whether Taleyarkhan's results were fraudulent.'"
We've discussed this gentleman's work and the scrutiny it has received several times, and members of the scientific community seem to have given him the benefit of the doubt in many cases.
Better late than never, this guy has been either bullshitting or been genuinely incompetent for years.
When I first heard about his whole ultrasonic bubble excitation fusion experiment, I honestly thought: WTF? This was quite a while ago, and all the evidence was against him then as well.
It is people like these who give research scientists a bad name...
There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face - Ben Williams
this is ofcourse still up for heavy debate.. the conclusion is based on some statements that because other scientists can't replicate it without the help of the professor it would be misconduct.. Maybe all the other scientists just don't understand the 'problem'.. because you don't know how something works (even with full documentation) doesn't mean it is impossible.. If this guy had a trackrecord of 'misconduct' then it would propably be something else, but he hasn't...
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=619841&cid=24261431/
I really want to see one of these fusion processes work. It would make a radical change in our society, by removing any reason for the US government to care what happens in the middle east.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
"TableTop"-less Fusion? Count me in.
When I was in graduate school/postdoc, I wrote for the Stanford Daily a couple of times for fun as way to practice my writing skills. One of the articles I wrote was on this research. Interestingly, I interviewed Nobel winner Douglas Osheroff and he shared his thoughts with me on this research. If memory serves me, he thought it was interesting, but prematurely published.
Interesting to look back on this in light of this finding.
Do you mean no more flying cars either ? :(
Who cares about tabletop fusion?
I want my "Mr. Fusion" that I can slap into my car!
you still shouldn't out the others working on similar things:
-------------
By 1991, 92 groups of researchers from 10 different countries had reported excess heat, tritium, neutrons or other nuclear effects.[73] Over 3,000 cold fusion papers have been published including about 1,000 in peer-reviewed journals (see indices in further reading, below). In March 1995, Dr. Edmund Storms compiled a list of 21 published papers reporting excess heat and articles have been published in peer reviewed journals such as Naturwissenschaften, European Physical Journal A, European Physical Journal C, Journal of Solid State Phenomena, Physical Review A, Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry, Japanese Journal of Applied Physics, and Journal of Fusion Energy (see indices in further reading, below).
The generation of excess heat has been reported by (among others):
* Michael McKubre, director of the Energy Research Center at SRI International,
* Giuliano Preparata (ENEA (Italy))
* Richard A. Oriani (University of Minnesota, in December 1990),
* Robert A. Huggins (at Stanford University in March 1990),
* Yoshiaki Arata (Osaka University, Japan),
* T. Mizuno (Hokkaido University, Japan),
* T. Ohmori (Japan),
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion#Experimental_reports
"Despite a backdrop of meager funding and career-killing derision from mainstream scientists and engineers, cold fusion is anything but a dead field of research. Presenters at the MIT event estimated that 3,000 published studies from scientists around the world have contributed to the growing canon of evidence suggesting that small but promising amounts of energy can be generated using the infamous tabletop apparatus."
"MIT's Peter Hagelstein, on the other hand, said "cold fusion" reactions have yielded surplus energy from as far back as the initial experiments in 1989. Verification of these controversial results is not the problem -- many labs around the world have reproduced parts of the results many times. "
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/08/cold_fusion?currentPage=all#
U.S. Navy Report Supports Cold Fusion:
http://www.infinite-energy.com/iemagazine/issue44/navy.html
""Last March, scientists at the annual conference of the august American Physical Society heard presentations on cold fusion. Next month, the Second International Conference on Future Energy will be held in Washington, D.C. The vast majority of physicists remains skeptical, but at the Office of Naval Research, six of the nine experiments performed produced an unexplainable amount of excess heat.""
http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060808/REPOSITORY/608080316&SearchID=73253345954312
"Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a tabletop accelerator that produces nuclear fusion at room temperature, providing confirmation of an earlier experiment conducted at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), while offering substantial improvements over the original design."
http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/ny_team_confirms_ucla_tabletop_fusion_10017.html
Science in Neglect - Nobel Laureate S
There was a TV programme on this guy a couple of years ago. No other scientists were able to duplicate his work so as part of the investigation the TV production company gathered together the finest fusion scientists they could find and they tried one last time to duplicate the experiment. Although Rusi Taleyarkhan agreed to interviews he refused point-blank to take part in the on camera experiment and (surprise surprise) there was no evidence of fusion.
Ganty
It's amazing how many tabletop cold fusion experiments have attracted public attention, and all turned out to be fraudulent when they claimed to have started nuclear reactions. The worldwide large-scale not-so-cold fusion project ITER has just started, with an estimated cost of 5bn EUR, and there are still guys out there trying to outsmart them on a tabletop and some cookbook chemistry.
did you even read the summary? No one has been able to duplicate his work. ever. while it is interesting and someone should study the work for other possible effects overall it has been a massive failure.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
You don't need future tech to give the middle finger to the Middle East - you can do it now.
One way you can reduce the Middle East's influence is to drive down the value of oil and you can do that by switching your car to natural gas. There are several companies like this one that will sell you a kit to make the switch. Googling "cng conversion kits gas" brings up a host of sources.
Since natural gas is not taxed as heavily and demand is lower, a gallon-equivalent of natural gas costs about half what gasoline costs. The conversion kits allow you to choose between natural gas and gasoline so if you're somewhere you can't find a natural gas station, you can switch back to gasoline. If you there isn't a natural gas station near where you live, you can install a natural gas compressor in your garage that'll fill your car overnight. The downsides are you lose some trunk space to the extra tank, natural gas stations aren't as numerous as gasoline stations and since methane doesn't store as many calories as gasoline, you lose about 10% of your engine's power. For me, the later issue isn't a big deal since my car has more power than it needs to get me around.
Natural gas is domestically produced and there's enough of it to last 100 years and that's not counting the undersea hydrate fields. I'd rather burn domestic gas than give Al-Qaeda a cut of every dollar I spend on gasoline.
The committee 'could not find any other instances of scientists being able to replicate Taleyarkhan's results without Taleyarkhan having direct involvement with the experiments,
I see two possibilities there...
First, he could have made up numbers. Absolutely unforgivable, and we should all break out the tar and feathers.
However, if reputable scientists have reproduced his work, even with his direct involvement, then he has accomplished something interesting (even if not necessarily what he believes).
It's really frustrating. When Pons and Fleischman originally announced "cold fusion", there was an immediate attempt at Stanford to replicate the result. The researchers gave a talk, which drew hundreds of people. In their first attempts, they had the apparatus surrounded with radiation detectors and alarms, in case there was a sudden burst of radiation. After a while, they realized that wasn't going to happen. The effect, if any, resulted in a few extra neutrons per hour over background.
They saw some variations in neutron flux, but discovered that people standing around the apparatus affected the result. Humans have lots of water and are neutron reflectors. So they moved the apparatus into a cube of lead blocks. No more neutron emissions.
Somebody may eventually get fusion this way, but probably won't get out more power than they put in. If you can figure out some way to put a macroscopic amount of energy into a microscopic volume, you can get a little fusion. It's been done with big capacitor banks, with lasers, with explosive compression, and with the Farnsworth Fusor. But far more energy goes in than comes out.
They all forgot to add cheese.
The perpetuum mobile machines of the present.
Now, I don't want to discount it as snakeoil altogether, but it's one of the fields where a lot of money is pumped into questionable "research". It saddens me that some self proclaimed scientists manage to siphon money away from honest, hard working researchers by producing spectacular (if only ... ok, I don't find a better word, fraudulent) results that surprisingly nobody can reproduce.
Partly at least this can be blamed on our society that wants immediate return of investment. I gave you money, so dammit, produce something! I can't wait the years it takes to produce meaningful results, I want results NOW!
Fusion is a decade or two (maybe three) away. Always has been, and as long as this way of funding remains, always will be. Fusion (and hey, maybe antigravity, who knows?) requires a lot of fundamental research for years with no immediate results, nothing to show off to VC, nothing to patent and nothing to milk for money. And unless we're willing to do that kind of research, nothing will change.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The committee 'could not find any other instances of scientists being able to replicate Taleyarkhan's results without Taleyarkhan having direct involvement with the experiments'
The fix for this is very simple. Rename the entire process to the "Taleyarkhan Effect." Taleyarkhan will then be directly involved in every experiment, and the results will be reliably reproducible.
"If we didn't need oil, we wouldn't have troops in the ME. If we didn't have troops in the ME to begin with, 9/11 would never have happened."
As long as Israel continues to exist, and receives funding from the United States, Al-Qaeda would have reason to attack the United States.
Read Bin Laden's letter to America, it explains all of this.
You don't even need to go far in the letter:
"As for the first question: Why are we fighting and opposing you? The answer is very simple:
(1) Because you attacked us and continue to attack us.
a) You attacked us in Palestine: "
Even if you weren't burning gasoline in your cars, you'd still be consuming oil for plastics, lubrication, vasoline, and any other petroleum based product or process.
In fact, there is no copyright in data (that is, in the facts); actually, using data published by others is a hallmark of scientific progress. That's why they published the data in the first place. If he had claimed the data as his own it would be scientific misconduct; if he failed to attribute the data to its authors it would be scientific misconduct. But there is no way for him to break copyright laws by publishing facts that were generated by others. In fact, even if he used the author's actual graphs and tables (which may be copyrighted), it is not so obvious that he actually broke copyright laws -- scientific use (with attribution) may very well come under the defense of fair use. We are seeing here the results of the propaganda campaign to extend copyright beyond all bounds.
Uhh, they have refuted his work experimentally, or at least failed to reproduce it despite trying. While I agree that one of the claims sustained against him was petty (adding a student's name to a paper when the student didn't do the work), the other claim -- that his work was independently reproduced when it in fact was not -- goes right to the heart of the issue.
did you even read the summary? No one has been able to duplicate his work. ever. while it is interesting and someone should study the work for other possible effects overall it has been a massive failure.
and?
I don't see how "i couldn't replicate it" turns into "scientific misconduct".
I agree with GP on this, something smells fishy here.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
I really want to see one of these fusion processes work. It would make a radical change in our society, by removing any reason for the US government to care what happens in the middle east.
Unfortunately, wanting something doesn't make it real
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I don't get it. Why do you use additional accounts to create the illusion that another person is contributing the to conversation? And wtf does Microsoft have to do with this? Why even bring it up?
Is this a rhetorical question?
If you look up "Bubble Fusion" on Wikipedia, you'll see that there have been replications. Perhaps not convincing enough replications to change people's minds, but there does seem to be something interesting enough going on with the collapsing bubbles to warrant further investigation. I'm concerned that everyone who makes a claim that could revolutionize energy production finds themselves facing attempts to destroy their reputations. What kind of environment is that to perform science in? If you follow the cold fusion research, you know that while cold fusion has not proved practical (it can be replicated, but not reliably), there is obviously some phenomenon at the heart of it that is certainly worth looking into. Pons and Fleishman reported a real phenomenon that - while it might never work out as an energy source - is nevertheless an aspect of nature that deserves study. However, it appears that whenever any natural phenomenon that could potentially make oil and coal obsolete, that science and anyone interested in it becomes a target. As badly as we need to get off of oil, people trying to find alternatives should be rewarded, not attacked.
'Tis a funny game, acting blameless with the blood of millions on our collective hands. Americans are quite good at it. Blameless for the situation of the black bottom class, how dare they be bottom class. Blameless for the middle east, how dare they be mad at us for 50 years of murder.
Maybe if the US would follow some of the morals it claims to follow through the Bible when it's politicians pander to those groups, we wouldn't have ever seen a 9/11, because we never would have murdered anyone.
I guess it's easier to say "It's not my problem" than to accept responsibility. It's the American way, after all.
It's been a long time.
Strikes me as odd that one one has tried to implement a plasma wakefield accelerator in a configuration that would fuse hydrogen.
All rites reversed 2010
Let's put the blame where blame belongs. The United States has made some poor foreign policy decisions in the past. Certain factions in the middle east are responsible for using America/Jew-hating to empower themselves and for creating their own underclasses of hopeless young men/women with nothing but the hate. These men/women are personally guilty for carrying out acts of terror on civilians.
So let's all take responsibility for the things we've actually done wrong instead of trying to pile all the blame in one place. And move forward, with contrition and candor.
Wow. "The United States has made some poor foreign policy decisions in the past." is how you euphemise 50 years of assassination, war, murder, and propping up murderous regimes while tearing down democracies with the hidden talons of the CIA.
You're too well indoctrinated. I doubt you could take responsibility for something if you wanted to.
It's been a long time.
I'm not disputing whether the US has "blood on its hands". But being perfectly innocent does *not* protect you from things like 9/11, or worse (see Sudan). In fact, the bullies of the world prefer helpless victims to ones that might fight back. If you are strong, you can either be a bully, or you can use your strength to protect those weaker than you from bullies. Of course, then there are complications like the guy you are protecting being lazy and not taking basic realistic steps for self-defense.
As a super power, the US is going to have a huge effect on other nations, intentional or not. The question to ask is, are we going to be a bully, or a watchman on the wall (or just retreat to our resource consuming paneled house and ignore the riff raff)?
This seems like the typical gut reaction of any society who doesn't understand a new theory or technology. I can't count or list how many different discoveries have had this same reaction by both the scientific community and the public. Galileo comes to mind. It is likely that only after this guys death will they really discover what his work meant. Sounds like some serious penis envy in the scientific world.
This is exactly what is wrong with our world.
IMAGE VERIFICATION IS EVIL!
The fact that no one has been able to replicate the work is not scientific misconduct, and the article says so flat out. The two cases of scientific misconduct that the panel found were that he published a paper under a student's name when that student was not involved in the work whatsoever, and he stated in a scientific publication that his work had been independently verified when it had only been verified by teams working directly with him, which the panel did not consider to be independent.
So basically, he was found guilty of exaggerating the independence of work that he assisted with. No evidence was found to support the claim that he intentionally and fraudulently falsified data. A scientific misdemeanor not a felony. Of course the summary and discussion will all focus on what people think he did rather than what the panel actually found.
I don't hate twitter, I just think he's a dick. Which is a shame, because he sometimes makes really good posts - but I never mod these up, because he's a dick and deserves the karma hell he exists in. I've read slashdot long enough to know the 5 main accounts he uses. And that none of the duplicate accounts ever deny being twitter.
Is this a rhetorical question?
Is it me, or does everyone that seems to make some progress involving cold fusion is accused of faking results and scientific misconduct? Is this kind of behaviour normal?
.
This was my first thought.
Nothing of substance - if your objective is a compelling argument for room temperature fusion - has evolved from this line of research.
Holy crap dude, really? What do you do that gives you this much free time?
um Tokamak has produced controlled fusion. Many others have as well.
it isn't cold fusion though, and it isn't power plant fusion IE more energy that it consumes.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
It doesn't matter whether attribution was there or not -- or whether in this case a fair use defense would be successful. The point is that copyright law is complicated, and a panel of academics set up to judge issues of academic misconduct is not qualified to make the statement "this guy broke copyright laws". Whether his use was fair or not (even without attribution) is a tricky issue of law on which there surely are disagreements. Non-lawyers should not be saying that this guy definitely broke copyright laws, the same way that lawyers should not be saying that his experiments definitely defied the laws of physics.
He can put that on his resume and get a job with all the other pseudo-scientists who work for the Government then.
Are you choosing to believe the Slashdot post's summary over a comment extensively citing scientific literature?
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
Oops, sorry, this damn new slashdot format made me think you were replying to another comment.
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
You can run a car on tap water. You 'just' need to electrolyse the water into its component gasses and then burn them in the combustion chambers. You can even collect the exhaust steam and condense it back into the water again.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Wait - I've seen this one before, it's a bad Keanu Reeves movie called Chain Reaction, where they get a type of fusion system working (iirc was fusion), but is sabotaged because it would cause the world economy to collapse as oil wouldn't be needed...
Summary: of course it's a false claim - Keanu Reeves is supposed to do that!
That would be a perpetual motion machine. It takes more energy to electrolyze the water than you get back burning the component gasses, so you need another power input somewhere - in which case your car isn't running on water, it's running on the other input.
Whoosh!
Also,how would that be perpetual motion? I never claimed that the electrolysis would be powered by the burning gases. The burning gases power the car and the recovered water can be turned into the gases. You need a power input to run the whole show, hence the quotes around the word just.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
the findings this guy was found guilty of are not terribly terrible. putting a student's name on a paper even though he didn't do the work? and stuff gets published all the time which doesn't stand up to attempts to replicate it. anybody old enough to remember the famous experiments where planaria could "learn" by being fed ground up planaria who had learned something? haven't seen much reference to those lately? that said, his research does seem to be a crock.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
If you look deeper into the case (i.e., from the very beginning), you'll find that there HAVE been independent duplications of the work: one from a school in Texas and another by a professor from Stanford University. But you've gotta look hard, the detractors have seen to it that Taleyarkhan's name is the only one disparaged. And in the scientific community, even ONE successful duplication is enough. Fusion is a really finicky process. It requires JUST the right conditions and temperatures to occur--that's why it's so fascinating, so if you're asking for a full blown get-it-right-every-time deal, then you've got a long wait. It seems Taleyarkhan's technology hasn't been allowed to progress any further than that, due to these impetuous whistle blowers smothering all positive results. And the positive research results have been smothered because this technology is BIG NEWS--even been dubbed the "holy grail to physics." Wouldn't YOU like in on it? What the public is seeing is a classic example of sour grapes. Those in power are ticked off because their names aren't first on the patent rights, and they don't get their share of the fame, so they're settling for this: fifteen minutes at-a-time of derogatory fame, but fame nonetheless. There's even a published rebuttal of Taleyarkhan's (not circulated as profoundly, hmm...I wonder why that is???), which shows the signatures of the DETRACTORS, yes the very people who are screaming out misconduct, attesting to the occurrence of FUSION right there in Taleyarkhan's lab. Look deeper, there's only one side of the story being brought to the public's attention, and you have to really search to piece it together. I was really surprised myself. The evidence will show that the real frauds are those accusers now probably breaking out the champaign for another successful defamation.
If the guy is being dragged through the mud about Fusion it must work because the evil governments are trying to suppress it.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Nope that's just you choosing to take tons of scientific research with peer-reviewed publications on the one side, and some guy's blogpost on the other side, and deciding that balances out. And the reason that's supposed to work: a world-wide conspiracy involving thousands of scientists, hundreds of governments (even the Bush government accepts this research now) and even several oil executives. Yes of course: it's you who are sane, everybody else is stark-raving mad. Do you really think you are making a good argument there?
Some second-rank labs reproduced the results, but the best ones couldn't find anything.
Maybe?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
As opposed to whom? Are you trying to say that the Brits did a better job when they ruled a third of the globe? Or maybe the russians when they imposed an iron curtain on Eastern Europe? Or maybe the Ottomans, when they invaded all of the lands around them and cut down all of the trees in Greece, made slaves of Greek children and marched them home?
I'm not going to apologize or feel bad about history, cause we'll never know the alternative.
I'm sure that Osama Bin Laden thought history was justification for flying planes into buildings and killing a bunch of civilians and giving the US govenment the justification for invading two countries and causing uncountable misery for millions. Someday, we might find out the answer, but frankly I couldn't care less.
Of course I do.
What's ironic about his use of multiple accounts to shill his own posts and create the illusion that many people share his views is that it's directly analogous to the behaviour of the company he professes so much hate for: Microsoft. I think most people would agree that the quality of Windows and Internet Explorer do not explain their massive presence in the market. Through use of hard-nosed business practices (most/all perfectly legal) Microsoft exploited customers to push what they wanted to push - their software.
Twitter's unethical practices push what he wants to push - his POV. He;s certainly entitled to share his POV; it's his manipulation of the system which loses him most respect and authority.
Is this a rhetorical question?