*http://newenergytimes.com/news/2007/NET21.htm#fab 11. Science Cold Fusion Attack Story Fabricated * By Steven Krivit
In 1990, a science journalist by the name of Gary Taubes took a set of facts and rumors and fabricated a story that made it look like electrochemist John O'Mara Bockris (biography)<http://newenergytimes.com/Conversations/Bockris.htm>and his group of researchers at Texas A&M University spiked their cold fusion cell with tritium and thus were claiming fraudulent evidence for so-called cold fusion. Until then, Bockris was one of the most highly regarded electrochemists in the world, with more than 600 papers and a dozen books, including the widely used college text *Modern Electrochemistry,* to his credit. Tritium is an isotope of hydrogen, and it typically exists as a gas. It is radioactive, but only for a short while. Its half-life is 12.5 years. The generation of tritium in low energy nuclear reaction (historically known as cold fusion) experiments is rare, and when observed, it is seen at relatively low levels. Tritium does not exist in nature at significantly high levels, and its presence at levels significantly above background would have been convincing evidence that some kind of nuclear reaction was occurring in cold fusion experiments. After the defamatory *Science* article by Taubes was published, Bockris' reputation plummeted. Because of the fear of appearing to endorse voodoo science and the potential harm to their own reputations, other journals were reluctant to publish the subsequent confirming evidence to support what was called cold fusion research. Taubes never had any hard evidence to support his indirect but very obvious assertion of fraud on the part of the Bockris group. However, he very creatively spun his story, and *Science* pumped it up even further with the advance news release to make it look like an open-and-shut case, thereby destroying the reputation of a respected scientist. Bockris knew that Taubes was developing this story and attempted, in good faith, to explain to this journalist why his speculation was groundless from a scientific basis, but Taubes apparently didn't listen to this world-class electrochemist, whose first paper was published 44 years earlier in *Nature*. The editors of *Science* most likely did not know about the letter Bockris sent to Taubes in advance of the article. In the letter, Bockris debunked Taubes' hypothesis of spiking. That Taubes failed to include the facts presented by Bockris in the article could be viewed as a breach of journalism ethics. Taubes' ethics are brought further into question with the accounts of his intimidation, aggression, and attempts to coerce a confession from Bockris' graduate student, Nigel Packham. After *Science* published the article, researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory, among the world's leading research institutions with expertise in tritium, performed an independent and unsolicited analysis of Taubes' hypothesis. Researchers at Los Alamos found that the signature of spiked tritium in these cells could not possibly match the signature reported by the Bockris group. * Science* declined to publish both a rebuttal letter from Bockris and the paper from Los Alamos radiochemist Ed Storms (biography)<http://newenergytimes.com/Conversations/storms/StormsBio.htm>. On March 4, 2000, *New Energy Times* editor Steven B. Krivit met with Eugene F. Mallove, then the editor of *Infinite Energy *magazine, and picked up the trail of cold fusion research. On July 10, 2004, Krivit traveled to Texas and met with Bockris and his wife, Lily Bockris, to get his story. On Oct. 6, 2006, Krivit sent a letter explaining the matter and providing a Web link to the full details of this story to *Science* editor Donald Kennedy, to John Holdren, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the parent organization of *Science*, and to Gilbert S. Omenn and David Baltimore, also on the organization's board. Krivit requested a correction to the record. *Science* and the organization failed to provide a response. On Feb. 15, 2007, at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in San Francisco, Krivit hand-delivered a second copy of his October letter to Holdren. On Feb. 18, still at the AAAS meeting, Krivit met with Earl Lane, senior communications officer for the organization, and provided him with a full set of the printed evidence. *Science *and the American Association for the Advancement of Science have failed to respond.
