Nexus - 1102 - New Times Magazine-pages

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successfully replicated the Pons and Fleischmann experiment in In 1993, the local media got wind of the research and made it 1989 and discovered bursts of tritium production. widely known that mediaeval alchemy was being performed at the He then became one of the principal targets of a smear university! This led to a second, even nastier, scientific witch campaign against cold fusion research by science journalist Gary hunt against Bockris. Twenty-three distinguished professors at Taubes. Taubes was writing a book on cold fusion and had Texas A&M signed a petition to the provost, asking that Bockris already made up his mind that cold fusion was "pathological be stripped of his title, and 11 full professors in the Chemistry wad science".'’ He spent time with Bockris and his students at Texas Department wrote a letter asking that Bockris be removed from A&M, posing as a disinterested seeker of the truth. There he got the department. The petition stated:”' the idea that Nigel Packham, one of Bockris's graduate students, "...we believe that Bockris' recent activities [have] made the had "spiked" the cold fusion cell with tritium. The allegation was terms 'Texas A&M' and 'Aggie' objects of derisive laughter utterly baseless, but Taubes was out for blood and needed to have throughout the world... For a trained scientist to claim, or sup- his scandal. He got Science to publish his allegations, which it port anyone's claim, to have transmuted elements is difficult for did in its June 15, 1990 issue.'* Bockris called the editor and us to believe and is no more acceptable than to claim to have asked for the right to publish a detailed response, but his request invented a gravity shield, revived the dead or be mining green was denied. Eventually, he managed to get a one-column letter cheese on the moon..." published, denying the allegations and calling Taubes's piece a Bockris was subsequently investigated for fraud, based on "gossip-based account"."” charges that he was trying to defraud investors with false claims Publication of Taubes's paranoid delusions in Science gave of being able to manufacture gold. He was "completely them wide credence and circulation. A fair-minded article exonerated" only one week after a January 1994 hearing in which published in Wired in 1998 sets the record straight:” he had been allowed to present his research and defend himself. "We thought Taubes was genuine at first,’ Bockris told me The professors in the Chemistry Department who had initiated recently, speaking in a clipped, precise British accent that he the investigation, led by Distinguished Professor Frank A. acquired before he moved to the United Cotton, were disappointed at this outcome. States in 1953. 'We exposed our lab books to So they secretly formed a committee to start him, and told him our results. But then he yet another investigation. Bockris learned said to Packham, my grad student, 'I've of the existence of this "Ad Hoc turned off the tape, now you can tell me—it's Committee" only when information of its a fraud, isn't it? If you confess to me now, I . existence was leaked to the press in June won't be hard on you, you'll be able to pursue To conventional 1994. In classic totalitarian fashion, he was your career.’ chemistry and physics, subsequently denied the right to defend him- "(Taubes has been shown Bockris's state- the claim of heavy self before the committee and even to know ment. He prefers not to comment.) what the charges were. He later learned that "According to Bockris, 'A postdoctoral elemental he was being investigated because his student named Kainthla and a technician i results were "impossible". named Velev both detected tritium and heat transmutations oom After 11 months of investigation, Bockris after we took Packham off the work because occurring In chemical was exonerated again in May 1995. But the of the controversy. Since then, numerous systems, apparently official investigation is only part of the people have obtained comparable results. "In 1994, I counted 140 papers reporting tritium in low-temperature fusion experiments. One of them was by Fritz Will, the president of The Electrochemical Society, who has an impeccable reputation." "Still, Taubes's report in the June 1990 Science magazine clearly suggested that Packham might have added tritium to fake his results. This reassured many people that cold fusion had been bogus all along. Packham story. An article in Infinite Energy,” which describes the entire affair in full detail, suggests a psychological expla- nation for the unscientific conduct of Bockris's colleagues: "One of the most difficult aspects of the treatment to which Bockris was subjected was social ostracism, starting with Dean [Dr W. Michael] Kemp's accusation and not even ending with the second exoneration. There were about sixty-five professors in the large Chemistry Department at Texas A&M. Most ignored Bockris for much of the validating the ancient protoscience of alchemy, constitutes an even greater provocation than cold fusion. received his PhD, but only on condition two-year period in which the that all references to cold fusion be removed from the body of his University, egged-on by ring-leaders in the Department, acted thesis. Today he works for NASA, developing astronaut life- against him. After the first complete exoneration, two professors support systems. 'I don't know why Gary Taubes wrote what he did congratulate him, but he was isolated. did,’ he says. ‘Certainly I did not add any tritium in my "Bockris' wife Lilli felt it perhaps more than he, because she experiment." had a number of faculty wives whom she had known as friends. But for Bockris, the worst was yet to come. In 1991, he was When she met them now in the supermarket, instead of having the approached by Joe Champion, an inventor from Tennessee who usual kindly chat, they turned their backs on her. Lilli recalls that claimed he had found a process that could perform heavy element the year she spent in Vienna after the Nazis took over seemed to transmutation. Bockris eventually brought Champion to Texas her less unpleasant and threatening than the isolation and nasti- A&M as a consultant and started experiments to replicate the ness which she felt in College Station, Texas, from 1993 through claimed results. 1995. To conventional chemistry and physics, the claim of heavy ps) elemental transmutations occurring in ' ‘chemical! en en On systems, apparently validating the ancient protoscience of alchemy, Reena = Dele Le eto greater provocation than cold fusion. 52 = NEXUS constitutes an even www.nexusmagazine.com FEBRUARY — MARCH 2004