Bubble Fusion - Doubts Prompt Investigation

Doubts Prompt Investigation

Reports as spectacular as the above arouse a lot of doubt. In March 2006, Nature published a "special report" "silencing the hype" that called into question the validity of the results of the Purdue experiments. The report quotes Brian Naranjo of the University of California, Los Angeles to the effect that neutron energy spectrum reported in the 2006 paper by Taleyarkhan, et al. was statistically inconsistent with neutrons produced by the proposed fusion reaction and instead highly consistent with neutrons produced by the radioactive decay of a Californium isotope commonly used as a laboratory neutron source .

The response of Taleyarkhan et al., published in Physical Review Letters, attempts to refute Naranjo's hypothesis as to the cause of the neutrons detected.

Doubts at Purdue University's Nuclear Engineering faculty as to whether the positive results reported from sonofusion experiments conducted there were truthful prompted the university to initiate a review of the research, conducted by Purdue's Office of the Vice President for Research. In a March 9, 2006 article entitled "Evidence for bubble fusion called into question", Nature interviewed several of Taleyarkhan's colleagues who suspected something was amiss.

On February 7, 2007, the Purdue University administration determined that "the evidence does not support the allegations of research misconduct and that no further investigation of the allegations is warranted". Their report also stated that "vigorous, open debate of the scientific merits of this new technology is the most appropriate focus going forward." In order to verify that the investigation was properly conducted, House Representative Brad Miller requested full copies of its documents and reports by March 30, 2007.

In June 2008, a multi-institutional team including Taleyarkhan published a paper in Nuclear Engineering and Design to "clear up misconceptions generated by a webposting of UCLA which served as the basis for the Nature article of March 2006", according to a press release.

On July 18, 2008, Purdue University announced that a committee with members from five institutions has investigated 12 allegations of research misconduct by Rusi Taleyarkhan. It concluded that two allegations were founded—that Taleyarkhan had claimed independent confirmation of his work when in reality the apparent confirmations were done by Taleyarkhan's former students and was not as "independent" as Taleyarkhan implied, and that Taleyarkhan had included an additional colleague's name on one of his papers who had not actually been involved in the research ("the sole apparent motivation for the addition of Mr. Butt was a desire to overcome a reviewer's criticism," the report concluded).

Taleyarkhan appealed the conclusions in the report, but this was rejected. He said the two allegations of misconduct were trivial administrative issues and had nothing to do with the discovery of bubble nuclear fusion or the underlying science, and that "all allegations of fraud and fabrication have been dismissed as invalid and without merit — thereby supporting the underlying science and experimental data as being on solid ground". A researcher questioned by the LA Times said that the report had not clarified whether bubble fusion was real or not, but that the low quality of the papers and the doubts cast by the report had made him lose all the credibility that he formerly had among the scientific community.

On August 27, 2008 he was stripped of his named Arden Bement Jr. Professorship, and forbidden to be a thesis advisor for graduate students for at least the next 3 years.

Taleyarkhan received from September 2008 to August 2009 a $185,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to investigate bubble fusion. In 2009 the Office of Naval Research debarred him for 28 months, until September 2011, from receiving U.S. Federal Funding. During that period his name was listed in the 'Excluded Parties List' to prevent him from receiving grants from any government agency.