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“I am sure that you are aware of the DOE move to review the cold fusion field, as reported in The New York Times (3/25/04). Attached is a review article that, I hope, can be published in Scientific American. The title is “Recent cold fusion claims: are they valid?” It is not a paper defending cold fusion claims; it is a paper describing them, no matter what one is inclined to think. Scientifically literate readers are likely to appreciate my short summary of recent claims made by cold fusion researchers.

After familiarizing himself with the use of CR-39 detectors, about a year ago, the first author asked Steven Jones to send him a TiDx foil, similar to that described at the Tenth International Conference on Cold Fusion (1). It was an attempt detect 3 MeV protons with the CR-39 chips. The idea was to develop an experiment suitable for student-oriented cold fusion projects. That is how the first author became a cold fusion researcher. After receiving the foil he sandwiched it between two CR-39 detectors for the period of 55 days. The area of each detector was one square inch. The exposure started three days after the sample was prepared (by keeping the titanium foil in deuterium gas at high temperature and pressure).

What follows is a collection of messages about cold fusion from teachers. The messages were posted on the Internet discussion list, Phys-L, or were sent to me in private. They illustrate a wide range of opinion. PHYS-L is a list dedicated to learning and teaching physics with 700 subscribers from over 35 countries, the majority of whom are physics educators. .

1) A year ago I would have replied that cold fusion is pseudoscience. But I am no longer comfortable with this kind of reply. Why am I not comfortable? My first opinion was based on Huizenga’s famous ERAB report. I knew the author personally and I respected him. His criticism of cold fusion was convincing because it was based on the idea that cold fusion is a thermonuclear reaction between two colliding hydrogen ions. Experimental data certainly do not support such an idea. But who made this claim? Only the popular press and those who criticized cold fusion. Fleischmann and Pons, who discovered excess heat, speculated that some kind of nuclear processes might be responsible for what they observed. The very name “cold fusion” was highly unfortunate because it misled many scientists, including myself. Who invented this term? Was it introduced deliberately (as a straw man) to discredit the nascent field of research? I have no answers to such questions. But I suspect that this misleading term will survive the controversy; that is why I decided to use it here.