This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 1990, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
If the University of Utah's cold fusion effort were a horse, they would shoot it.
Hobbled by scandal, infested by flaky scientists and beaten down by a scientific community that can't decide whether to laugh or cry about it, the university's dream of a "clean,
unlimited source of energy" can no longer carry its own weight.
This is not to say the work done in the fledgling research field is without merit. At the National Cold Fusion Institute, scientists have refined measurement techniques and learned new processes that could have widespread applications. They have also seen signs of what may indeed be nuclear fusion in their assortment of beakers and tubes.
That by itself would be terribly interesting, but it is not the sort of thing for which state governments, particularly one as strapped as Utah's, can issue blank checks.
But a blank check is almost precisely what has been given to cold fusion's absentee inventors, B. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann.
Their no-show at Thursday's meeting of the state Fusion/Energy Advisory Council prompted council member indignation, but it shouldn't have been a big surprise.
Despite being the major benefactors of the state's generosity, Drs. Pons and Fleischmann have only agreed to meet with the panel twice before, and they've completely disregarded other scientists at the university. Now even the institute's director, who had been their most ardent defender the past nine months, acknowledges that they have been uncooperative.
The two men have not published anything on their work from the past year, and their two published papers on the subject have not convinced anyone with the resources to further fund the experimental work.
Cold fusion has become, at best, just another outpost in the world of basic science, and it is time for the state and the university to start treating it as such.
The university's own medical school is graced by researchers whose work is showing concrete progress toward conquering incurable diseases, but they know better than to appeal to the state for their money. There is a time-tested process by which science gets done in this country. It is called peer review, and, whatever its weaknesses, it has made the United States the scientific powerhouse of the world.
- The state got involved in cold fusion research because the prospects looked so magnificent and munificent. The $5 million was to be "seed money" for a multi-million dollar effort combining private and federal resources. So far the institute has received $40,000 in outside money.
What are the patent applications worth? Who knows? Not even members of the state advisory council seem fully convinced that anything useful will develop from staking such claims.
There could possibly be, nevertheless, a fallback position on the patent front. Perhaps the scientists have found something useful that, even without being an energy source, could provide a return on the state's investment. If so, the university's Office of Technology Transfer is equipped to manage that possibility.
The approximately $1.3 million in state money still in the Cold Fusion Institute account would buy about 50,000 books for the university's library or cover the state's contribution toward putting a thousand children through second grade. These are tasks the state is supposed to perform.
The upcoming independent review of the National Cold Fusion Institute will provide firm footing for the state panel to evaluate the institute's future. That evaluation should keep all state priorities in mind.
No one need be ashamed for the state's decision to place a moderate wager on the cold fusion longshot. The timid do not cash in when a long-odds entry confounds all experts and wins. By the same logic, it's foolish to keep betting when that longshot is no more than limping down the backstretch.