Why Do Scientists Dismiss Cold Fusion?
Is cold fusion truly impossible,
or is it just that no respectable scientist can risk their reputation working
on it?
A few years
ago, a physicist friend of mine made a joke on Facebook about the laws of
physics being broken in Italy.
He had two pieces of news in mind. One was a claim by a team at the Oscillation
Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus (OPERA) in Gran Sasso, who said they’d
discovered superluminal neutrinos. The other concerned Andrea Rossi, an
engineer from Bologna, who claimed to have a cold fusion reactor producing
commercially useful amounts of heat.
Why were these claims so
improbable? The neutrinos challenged a fundamental principle of Albert
Einstein’s theory of special relativity, which says that nothing can travel
faster than light. Meanwhile cold fusion (or LENR, for ‘low-energy nuclear
reaction’) is the controversial idea that nuclear reactions similar to those in
the Sun could, under certain conditions, also occur close to room temperature.
The latter was popularised in
1989 by Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, who claimed to have found evidence
that such processes could take place in palladium loaded with deuterium (an
isotope of hydrogen). A few other physicists, including the late Sergio Focardi
at Bologna, claimed similar effects with nickel and ordinary hydrogen. But most
were highly skeptical, and the field subsequently gained, as Wikipedia puts it,
‘a reputation as pathological science’.
It turned out that my
physicist friend and I disagreed about which of these unlikely claims was most
credible. He thought it was the neutrinos, because the work had been done by
respectable scientists rather than a lone engineer with a somewhat chequered
past. I favoured Rossi, on grounds of the physics. Superluminal neutrinos would
overturn a fundamental tenet of relativity, but all Rossi needed was a
previously unnoticed channel to a reservoir of energy whose existence is not in
doubt. We know that huge amounts of energy are locked up in metastable nuclear
configurations, trapped like water behind a dam. There’s no known way to get
useful access to it at low temperatures. But – so far as I knew – there was no
‘watertight’ argument that such methods were impossible.
My friend agreed with me
about the physics. (So has every other physicist I’ve asked about it since.)
But he still put more weight on the sociological factors – reputation, as it
were. So we agreed to bet a dinner on the issue. My friend would pay if Rossi
turned out to have something genuine, and I would pay if the neutrinos came up
trumps. We’d split the bill if, as then seemed highly likely, both claims
turned out to be false.
It soon became clear that I wasn’t
going to lose. The neutrinos were scratched from the race, when it became apparent that someone on OPERA’s team of respectable
scientists had failed to tighten an optical lead correctly.
Rossi, however, has been
going from strength to strength. While it is fair to say that the jury is still
out, there has been a lot of good news for my hopes of a free dinner in the
past couple of years. There were two reports (in 2013 and 2014) on tests of Rossi’s device by teams of Swedish and
Italian physicists whose scientific credentials are not in doubt, and who had
access to one of his devices for extended periods (a month for the second
test). Both reports claimed levels of excess heat far beyond anything
explicable in chemical terms, in the testers’ view. (The second report also claimed
isotopic shifts in the composition of the fuel.) Since then, there have been
several reports of duplications by experimenters in Russia and China, guided by details in the 2014 report.
More recently, Rossi was granted a US patent for one of his devices, previously
refused on the grounds that insufficient evidence had been provided that the
technique worked as claimed. There are credible reports that a 1MW version of
his device, producing many times the energy that it consumes, has been on trial
in an industrial plant in North Carolina for months, with good results so far.
And Rossi’s US backer and licensee, Tom Darden – who has a long track record of
investment in pollution-reducing industries – has been increasingly willing to
speak out in support of the LENR technology field. (Another investor, the
UK-based Woodford Funds, reports that it conducted ‘a rigorous due-diligence
process that has taken two and half years’.)
Finally, very recently,
there’s a paper by two senior Swedish physicists, Rickard Lundin and
Hans Lidgren, proposing a mechanism for Rossi’s results, inspired in part by
the second of two test reports mentioned above. Lundin and Lidgren say that the
‘experimental results by Rossi and co-workers and their E-Cat reactor provide
the best experimental verification’ of the process they propose.
As I say, I don’t claim that
this evidence is conclusive, even collectively. It’s still conceivable that
there is fraud involved, as many skeptics have claimed; or some large and
persistent measurement error. Yet these alternatives are becoming increasingly
unlikely. Rossi is not even the only person claiming commercially relevant
results from LENR. Another prominent example is Robert Godes, of the
California-based Brillouin Energy.
As several people
have noticed, a new clean source of energy would be really, really useful right
about now
You can see
why I’ve been salivating at the thought of my dinner. And it is not only my stomach that
has been increasingly preoccupied with this fascinating story. I’m a
philosopher of science, and my brain has been finding it engrossing, too.
Imagine that someone had a
working hot-fusion reactor in Florida – assembled, as Rossi’s 1MW device is
reported to be, in a couple of shipping containers, and producing several
hundred kilowatts of excess power, month after month, in apparent safety. That
would be huge news. As several people have noticed, a new clean source of
energy would be really, really useful right about now.
But if the potential news is
this big, why haven’t most of you heard about Rossi, or Godes, or any of the
other people who have been working in the area (for many years, in some cases)?
This is where, from a philosopher of science’s point of view, things get
interesting.
As a question about sociology, the
answer is obvious. Cold fusion is dismissed as pseudoscience, the kind of thing
that respectable scientists and science journalists simply don’t talk about
(unless to remind us of its disgrace). As a recent Fortune piece puts it, the Fleischmann and
Pons experiment ‘was eventually debunked and since then the term cold fusion
has become almost synonymous with scientific chicanery’. In this case, the
author of the article is blithely reproducing the orthodox view, even in the
lead-in to his interview with Darden – who tells him a completely different
story, and has certainly put his money where his mouth is.
Ever since 1989, in fact, the
whole subject has been largely off-limits in mainstream scientific circles.
Authors who do put their head above the parapet are ignored or rebuked. Most
recently, Lundin and Lidgren reported that they had submitted their paper to
the journal Plasma Physics
and Controlled Fusion, but that the editors declined to have it
reviewed; and that even the non-reviewed preprint archive, arxiv.org, refused to accept it.
So, as a matter of sociology,
it is easy to see why Rossi gets little serious attention; why an interview
with Darden associates him with scientific chicanery; and why, I hope, some of
you are having doubts about me for writing on the subject in a way that
indicates that I am prepared to consider it seriously. (If so, hold that
attitude. I want to explain why I take it to reflect a pathology in our present
version of the scientific method. My task will be easier if you are still
suffering from the symptoms.)
Sociology is one thing, but
rational explanation another. It is very hard to extract from this history any
satisfactory justification
for ignoring recent work on LENR. After all, the standard line is that the rejection
of cold fusion in 1989 turned on the failure to replicate the claims of
Fleischmann and Pons. Yet if that were the real reason, then the rejection
would have to be provisional. Failure to replicate couldn’t possibly be more
than provisional – empirical science is a fallible business, as any good
scientist would acknowledge. In that case, well-performed experiments claiming
to overturn the failure to replicate would certainly be of great interest.
What if the failure to
replicate wasn’t crucial after all? What if we already knew, on theoretical
grounds alone, that cold fusion was impossible? But this would make a nonsense
of the fuss over the failure to reproduce Fleischmann and Pons’ findings. And
in any case, it is simply not true. As I said at the beginning, what physicists
actually say (in my experience) is that although LENR is highly unlikely, we
cannot say that it is impossible. We know that the energy is in there, after
all.
‘If there is
something scientists fear, it is to become like pariahs’
No doubt one could find some
physicists who would claim it was impossible. But they might like to recall the
case of the great nuclear physicist Lord Rutherford, who claimed in 1933 that
‘anyone who expects a source of power from transformation of… atoms is talking
moonshine’ – only days before Leo Szilard, prompted by newspaper reports of
Rutherford’s remarks, figured out the principles of the chain reaction that
makes nuclear fission useable as an energy source, peaceful or otherwise.
This is not to deny that
there is truth in the principle popularised by Carl Sagan, that extraordinary
claims require extraordinary evidence. We should certainly be very cautious
about such surprising claims, unless and until we amass a great deal of
evidence. But this is not a good reason for ignoring such evidence in the first
place, or refusing to contemplate the possibility that it might exist. (As
Godes said recently: ‘It is sad that such people say that science should be
driven by data and results, but at the same time refuse to look at the actual
results.’)
Again, there’s a sociological
explanation why few people are willing to look at the evidence. They put their
reputations at risk by doing so. Cold fusion is tainted, and the taint is
contagious – anyone seen to take it seriously risks contamination. So the
subject is stuck in a place that is largely inaccessible to reason – a reputation trap, we might
call it. People outside the trap won’t go near it, for fear of falling in. ‘If
there is something scientists fear, it is to become like pariahs,’ as Lundin
puts it. People inside the trap are already regarded as disreputable, an
attitude that trumps any efforts that they might make to argue their way out,
by reason and evidence.
Outsiders might be surprised to learn
how well-populated the trap actually is, in the case of cold fusion and LENR.
The field never entirely went away, nor vanished from the laboratories of
respected institutions. (Rossi’s own background is not in these laboratories,
but he acknowledges that his methods owe much to those who are, or were –
especially to the late Sergio Focardi, one of the pioneers of the field.) To
anyone willing to listen, the community will say that they have amassed a great
deal of evidence of excess heat, not explicable in chemical terms, and of
various markers of nuclear processes. Some, including a team at one of Italy’s leading research centres, say that
they have many replications of the Fleischmann and Pons results.
Again, the explanation for
ignoring these claims cannot be that other attempts failed 25 years ago. That
makes no sense at all. Rather, it’s the reputation trap. The results are
ignored because they concern cold fusion, which we ‘know’ to be pseudoscience –
we know it because attempts to replicate these experiments failed 25 years ago!
The reasoning is still entirely circular, but the reputation trap gives its
conclusion a convincing mask of respectability. That’s how the trap works.
In a
case like this, there is very little cost to a false positive. But there may be
a huge cost to a false negative
Fifty years ago, Thomas Kuhn
taught us that this is the usual way for science to deal with
paradigm-threatening anomalies. The borders of dominant paradigms are often
protected by reputation traps, which deter all but the most reckless or
brilliant critics. If LENR were an ordinary piece of science (or proposed
science), the challenge posed by Rossi and others would promise fascinating
spectator sport for philosophers and historians of science – a Kuhnian
revolution waiting to happen, perhaps, with threats to the stability of the
reputation trap now clearly in view. We could take our seats on the sidelines
and wait to see whether walls fall – whether distinguished skeptics end up with
egg on their faces. ‘Pleasant is it to behold great encounters of warfare arrayed
over the plains, with no part of yours in the peril,’ as Lucretius put it.
This alone would be enough to
explain why I’ve been finding Rossi’s apparent progress so stimulating. But
there’s more, much more. None of us, not even philosophers, are mere spectators in
this case. We all have skin in the game, and parts, indeed a planet, quite
seriously in peril. We are like a thirsty town, desperate for a new water
supply. What we drink now is slowly killing us. We know that there’s an
abundant supply of clean, cheap water, trapped behind the dam. The problem is
to find a way to tap it. A couple of engineers thought that they had found a
way 25 years ago, but they couldn’t make it work reliably, and the profession
turned against them. Since then, there’s been a big reputation cost to any
engineer who takes up the issue.
Put this way, it is easy to
see an argument that we’ve been shooting ourselves in the foot. In a case like
this, there is very little cost to a false positive – to investing some time
and money in an avenue that in the end turns out to go nowhere. But there may
be a huge cost to a false negative. If Rossi, Godes, Lundin, Lidgren and others
do turn out to have something useful – something that can make some useful
contribution to meeting our desperate need for clean, cheap energy – we will
have wasted a generation of progress. What we should have done instead is to
have engineered the exact opposite of a reputation trap – perhaps an X
Prize-like reward for the first reliable replication of the Fleischmann and
Pons results, above some commercial bar.
At last I can explain what I meant
earlier, when I asked you to hold on to the thought that I must be a bit flaky
myself, if that was your reaction to my willingness to take cold fusion
seriously. If you do think that – at least, if you think it without having
studied the evidence for yourself – then your reaction is a symptom of the
reputation trap. But now I’ve suggested that the trap itself might be an
irrational pathology, in a special case such as this, in which the cost of a
false negative is very high. If I’m right, then in a more rational world, we
would fix our scientific norms to escape it. In a more rational world, you
wouldn’t think I’m flaky.
I don’t need to deny that
your reaction is an appropriate one, by the standards of science as we
currently practice it, or that those standards work pretty well in general.
Reputation traps have a useful purpose in the Kuhnian picture. They help to
maintain the stability important to what Kuhn called normal science – the
ordinary, useful kind of science when paradigms are not under threat. But this
is compatible with the claim that they can be harmful in special cases (of
which cold fusion might be one) – and that we could do better if we were better
at identifying those cases in advance.
I suspect it’s too late to
dismantle the trap for LENR – the horse might already be in the process of
bolting. If Rossi and Godes et
al are actually on to something, then the field is going to be
mainstream soon anyway. But we could try to learn from our mistakes. There
might be other potential cases with a similar payoff structure (a high cost for
false negatives, with a low cost for false positives). I suspect there are some
in the area of emerging extreme risks, another field in which I have some interest.
I’ve met scientists employed
as technology forecasters for a very large enterprise, who were frustrated at
their inability to persuade their organisation to list LENR as a technology of
possible strategic interest, even with low probability. Once again, it was the
reputation trap at work. This attitude could be disastrous in other cases, if
the ideas stuck in the trap happened to be the key to addressing some
potentially catastrophic risk. (Indeed, as my physicist friend rightly points
out, it might be disastrous in the case of LENR itself, if it turns out to
generate its own extreme risks.)
Darden’s
attitude displays the cautious open-mindedness that has been lacking in
reactions to the field for most of its history
There are big issues here.
Would it be possible to avoid these counterproductive cases of the reputation
trap without erring too far in the other direction – without opening the
floodgates, so to speak? I’m not sure, but I think it is important to put the
question on the table. If LENR does develop in the direction I now think
likely, we might be able to salvage something useful from mistakes in this
case.
I’ll close with some words
from Darden, from a speech at ICCF-19, the international meeting of the LENR
community held in Padua, Italy this April. (A full transcript is accessible here.) If the field is indeed in the process of digging
itself out of the reputation trap, then Darden deserves much of the credit.
Either way, his attitude displays the kind of cautious open-mindedness that has
been so lacking in reactions to the field for most of its history.
Darden describes how he came
to invest in LENR. Until quite recently, he says, he shared the conventional
view that ‘the subject was dead’. But several independent enquiries about LENR
within a matter of weeks convinced him that there was something worth
investigating:
We believed LENR technology
was worth pursuing, even if we turn out to be unsuccessful ultimately. We were
willing to invest time and resources to see if this might be an area of useful
research in our quest to eliminate pollution. At the time, we were not
especially optimistic, but the global benefits were compelling.
He reports that things have
been going very well. ‘We’ve had some success, and we’re expanding our work…
and believe that we may be, at last, on the verge of a new paradigm shift.’
Finally, he expresses his appreciation to his audience, the LENR community
themselves, and recalls another controversial piece of Italian science:
I would like to say how truly
sorry I am that society has attacked you for the last three decades. The
treatment of Fleischmann and Pons, and the treatment of many of you, by
mainstream institutions and the media will go down in history as one more
example of scientific infanticide, where entrenched interests kill off their
divergent progeny. This seems to be a dark component of human nature, and I
note the irony of it – we are in Padova, Galileo’s home.
It would be easy to overstate
the analogy between mainstream institutions and the Inquisition, but it isn’t
entirely empty. If we refuse to acknowledge the possibility that existing
scientific institutions are not working as well as they might, we do something
to reinforce it. If the reputation trap makes it impossible to question the
role of the reputation trap, then the Cardinals are winning.
I am grateful for
comments from Martin Rees, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, Adrian Kent, Tim Lewens, Shahar
Avin, Ken Wharton and Andrew Briggs. This piece was made possible in part
through the support of a grant on Managing Extreme Technological Risk, from the
Templeton World Charity Foundation. The opinions expressed here are my own and
do not necessarily reflect the views of TWCF.
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