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Scientific American Column: 'It's Not Cold Fusion...But It's Something' (scientificamerican.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Scientific American magazine has published a guest column on low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR) [putting] into context the history of what was mistakenly referred to as cold fusion and what happened. The bottom line is that there is compelling cumulative evidence for nuclear reactions taking place, including shifts in the abundance of isotopes, element transmutations, and localized melting of metals. Furthermore, those reactions do not have the characteristics of either nuclear fission or nuclear fusion. Despite sharp criticism from much of the scientific community after the 1989 announcement by Fleischmann and Pons, the Department of the Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center and other reputable organizations continued the research and published many papers.
The article reports that "to the surprise of many people, a new field of nuclear research has emerged," adding that even in the early 20th century, atomic scientists were already reporting "inexplicable experimental evidence of elemental transmutations."
"Perhaps most surprising is that, in the formative years of atomic science in the early 20th century, some scientists reported inexplicable experimental evidence of elemental transmutations. In the 1910s and 1920s, this research was reported in popular newspapers and magazines, and papers were published in the top scientific journals of the day, including Physical Review, Science and Nature."
The SCIAM article is not at all about Rossi, the lead author of the SCIAM article is the guy who busted Rossi for fraud.
From what I remember, the bias against their claim wasn't because it was counter to accepted science - everyone was killing themselves trying to replicate the experiment - copies of their paper were being faxed and re-faxed almost to illegibility prior to publication. It was because of how they sensationalized their announcement - a full press conference with all the major TV news stations broadcasting live. I think their findings would've been much better received if they'd just published a journal article saying "we got a weird unexpectedly large energy production from this experiment - can anyone else replicate it?", instead of trying to go the rock star route as if they'd already won the Nobel Prize.
It's also worth pointing out that even fusion in stars isn't anywhere near as concentrated an energy source as regular chemical reactions. The energy production by fusion in the center of the sun is estimated to only be about 275 Watts/m^3. Less than human metabolism (average human body is less than 0.1 m^3 and gives off about 100 Watts), and about the same as a compost heap. So when you're talking about low energy nuclear reactions, you're talking about really, really low energy levels. Possibly so low as to be of no practical use other than explaining some minor discrepancies in energy measured by certain very sensitive experiments.
Compared to its quality thirty years ago, it is. It has gone from a respectable scientific publication to something on the order of Popular Science. It's painful, because I absolutely loved that magazine when I was young.