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THE FLAGSHIP of cold fusion research, the University of Utah in the
US, and its president, Chase Peterson, are under attack from the institution’s
own staff. The science faculty says it will close the university’s National
Cold Fusion Institute if a team of specialists fail to find evidence of
fusion in the institute’s experiments. And faculties throughout the university
have asked the state to examine Peterson’s ‘competence’. Last week, the
university picked an expert panel, with members from within and outside
the university, to review expenditure and experiments by the institute.

If the institute closes, then any residual interest in cold fusion is
likely to fizzle out altogether. It was the university’s Stanley Pons, along
with Martin Fleischmann of the University of Southampton, who in March 1989
astonished the world by claiming to have produced fusion in a test tube
at room temperature.

Last August, the state of Utah, which runs the university, spent $4.5
million (Pounds sterling 2.7 million) creating the fusion institute in the
hope of replicating Pons’s results. The state expected further funding from
sponsors who might share the hope that cold fusion would become a reality.

That support did not materialise. But early this year, Peterson announced
that an ‘anonymous donor’ had suddenly offered $500 000 to the institute.
At the end of May, however, he acknowledged that the anonymous donor was
actually the university.

According to Hugo Rossi, dean of the college of science, ‘the president
(of the university) said it was his mistake – an attempt to bring less controversy
to the institute’. But it has had the opposite effect, he says. The director
of the institute, Fritz Will, declined the $500,000 ‘gift’ when its source
was revealed.

On 1 June, 22 members of the college of science met to discuss what
Rossi calls ‘the embarrassment’ caused by the incident. They told Peterson
they would choose a panel of experts to review the science paid for to date,
about $2.5 million worth. ‘We felt strongly that the time had come for the
college of science to restore a sense of integrity,’ said Rossi.

On 4 June, the faculty senate voted to ask the state’s governing board
for higher education to examine Peterson’s competence.

The fusion institute has never enjoyed smooth sailing. Rossi, its first
director, resigned last November after four months. ‘Part of the reason
for quitting was the inability to get the personnel there to collaborate,’
he said. He added that Pons has sometimes refused to share his data with
other scientists. If Pons declines to share his data with the review panel,
‘we would strongly recommend that he should not be funded’, says Rossi.

Meanwhile, Pons has threatened a colleague at the university with legal
action for casting doubts on his research. Michael Salamon, an associate
professor of physics, was the lead author of an article in Nature (vol 344,
p 401) that found no evidence for cold fusion in Pons’s fusion cells. On
3 April, Gary Triggs, who represents Pons and Fleischmann, wrote to Salamon
demanding that he retract his paper. The letter claims that the paper is
inaccurate and that there may have been some ‘selection of data’. It notes
that the paper was published just prior to a conference on cold fusion where
Pons was to speak.

The letter to Salamon stated: ‘Please be advised that any damages suffered
by my clients proximately caused by any act or omission on the part of yourself
or any other coauthor of the subject paper will not be tolerated. I have
been instructed by my clients to take such legal action as is deemed appropriate
to protect their interests in this matter.’

Salamon says: ‘What is particularly obscene about this is that (we)
are being theatened with legal action for honest scientific work done at
the behest of the University of Utah.’ He also says that Peterson advised
him to ‘lie low’, and that initially the university refused to indemnify
him against a lawsuit. According to Joseph Taylor, vice-president for academic
affairs, the state of Utah will defend Salamon if he is sued ‘in the line
of duty’. Salamon also notes that the university has paid Triggs $68,000
as a consultant on patents for cold fusion, even as he was writing threatening
letters to Salamon and his colleagues.

The letter has sparked outrage among scientists elsewhere. The American
Physical Society, many of whose members have long doubted Pons’s claims,
is to discuss the matter at its next executive committee meeting. According
to Robert Park at the APS’s Washington office, members are offering to contribute
to a legal defence fund for Salamon.

Yet another blow to the institute came last week when the Electric Power
Research Institute, poised to sign a contract with the institute, changed
its mind. ‘We should not proceed with the contract negotiations until the
dust settles,’ says David Worledge of the EPRI. The grant was for $160,000.