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The State Fusion/Energy Advisory Council Tuesday issued what the chairman said was the council's final ultimatum to Stanley Pons to begin cooperating or lose his research funding.
Dr. Pons, who has resigned as a tenured professor at the University of Utah to take an 18-month appointment as a research professor under a deal worked out with U.
administrators, could not be reached Tuesday to respond to the state council's request.
State council members, meeting in a marathon session at the state Capitol Tuesday, still held considerable hope for cold fusion's potential despite the release of an independent scientific review that said no experiment in the 11/2-year history of the University of Utah's National Cold Fusion Institute had proven cold fusion even exists.
Several members of the council, charged with overseeing the state's $5 million commitment to cold fusion, said they were losing patience with Dr. Pons after he had failed to reveal his data to the independent panel, which was supposed to bring credibility to the cash-starved institute.
Approximately $1 million in state funding remains, and that is due to run out by June 30.
"We had to have independent verification of his results," said council chairman Raymond L. Hixson. "Frankly, I'm a little troubled and upset."
"Our problem is we're going to be postponed until after the funds run out," said council member and state science adviser Randy Moon.
Despite earlier statements that he would cooperate fully with the review, Dr. Pons withheld information for patent reasons, the independent reviewers said. One reviewer, State University of New York at Buffalo electrochemist Stanley Bruckenstein, said that during the review Dr. Pons alluded to a special "trick" for making the experiment work, but he refused to reveal it.
As a result, institute director Fritz Will, who two months ago called the independent review crucial to the institute's future funding, now says any funding will likely have to wait until another scientific review can be undertaken.
This latest scientific review will be in the hands of Utah State University physicist/chemist Wilford Hansen, a member of the state advisory council. Under an agreement between the University of Utah and Dr. Pons, Dr. Hansen, along with U. College of Mines and Earth Sciences Dean Milton Wadsworth and others, will review Pons data and attempt to independently verify his work.
The university had to promise to indemnify the scientists against possible lawsuits from Dr. Pons before the review could go forward, according to John Morris, the U. associate vice president for academic affairs who negotiated the agreement with Dr. Pons' attorney.
Last year an attempt to independently verify some of Dr. Pons' claims by a group of U. physicists ended with Dr. Pons' attorney raising the possibility of legal action if they published their results, in which they found no evidence of fusion in Dr. Pons' own experiments. The results were published anyway.
Dr. Pons will be required to turn over his experimental data in two stages, the first due Jan. 15 and the second Feb. 1. If those deadlines are not met, state funding of Dr. Pons' research will be withdrawn, Mr. Hixson said.
Dr. Pons is not in town and his attorney was unavailable for comment Tuesday. Even U. President Chase N. Peterson said he did not know if Dr. Pons would cooperate with the latest review.
The independent scientific report released Tuesday gave the institute scientists high praise for their investigation of cold fusion phenomena, but said their results were not conclusive.
"No committee member holds that cold fusion has been firmly established by the NCFI or by others," stated the cover letter accompanying the independent review, which took place last Nov. 7.
The four review committee members issued individual reports in their own areas of expertise.
The strongest suspicions came from Yale University physicist Robert K. Adair, who noted that most in the scientific community do not join institute scientists in their belief in cold fusion.
"This cleavage has consequences in creating a level of siege atmosphere at the NCFI that may result in science that is less critical than it might be," Dr. Adair wrote. "I felt that very marginal positive results were taken far too seriously by a community - and a director - who want very much to prove their faith justified."
Dr. Adair also noted a "too-casual disregard" for existing nuclear theory.
The outside expert in heat measurement, University of Alberta chemist Loren G. Hepler, said in his report: "Calorimetric measurements at the NCFI have not yet established definitively that excess heat is produced or not produced."
Such excess heat is considered key to cold fusion's exploitation as an energy source, assuming its existence can be established and its source is found to be nuclear.
Mr. Hixson, the state council chairman, said the council originally released the state money on the belief that verification of the Pons-Fleischmann work had been obtained. "Since that time there have been serious questions as to whether that is true."
State council member and USU Provost Karen Morse said the review "accomplished what was needed in terms of having a high-quality review. . . . Work at the institute is valid."
But Dr. Morse said the reviewers "again and again" mentioned the importance of verifying the work of Dr. Pons, who has claimed energy production far above the scant reports from other institute researchers.
- "Overall, the outcome of the review by the external panel was very positive," said Dr. Will, who noted that all four reviewers were complimentary about the degree of professionalism among institute scientists.
Still, Dr. Will acknowledged that attracting money from private industry or the U.S. Department of Energy will require independent verification of the work of Dr. Pons and his British colleague, Martin Fleischmann.
Members of the state advisory council complained that the university and the institute had promised them a thorough plan for what may be the cold fusion effort's last six months. That plan was never made available until Wednesday, and then it was not in sufficient detail, council members said.
"I feel like we've had promises made that haven't been met," Mr.
Hixson said, noting that the council members have spent substantial amounts of their time on the project with no compensation.
Another council member, Mitchell Melich, said the phenomena are well worth studying, but it will require far more funds than the state can provide. He said that since the institute had been thus far unsuccessful in attracting outside money thus far, "we should seriously consider stopping cold fusion funding."