Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

This scholarly expose of the cold fusion controversy, brought public in 1989 at the University of Utah, is two parts chemistry and one part sociology of science as affected by greed. Close ( The Cosmic Onion ), a physicist from Britain's Ritherford Labs and a talented writer, offers a global view of the interactions of the science, politics and personalities involved in what may have been the archetypical science event of the '80s. Lay readers will need their high school chemistry and some physics to follow the detailed chronology of events and players (F. D. Peat's Cold Fusion would be a good reference). The mysteries of matter are often overshadowed by the volatile forces of humans and their institutions in a day-by-day, experiment-by-experiment account that simultaneously meets the tests of good science and good journalism. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

CHOICE Review

A detailed and thoroughly documented account of both the scientific and popular responses to the March 1989 announcement in a press conference that nuclear fusion had been achieved in a simple electrochemical experiment. Though the jury may still be out on the detailed reasons for some of the unexpected experimental observations, there is currently little support for the cold fusion hypothesis. This book analyzes, in a readable fashion, how the scientific community responded to the remarkable claims of the original investigators. It joins a group of works about anomaly in science, including Arthur Koestler's Case of the Midwife Toad (CH, Dec'72) and Felix Franks's Polywater (CH, Oct'81) that should be read by all practicing and intending scientists. Highly recommended for advanced undergraduates and up.-H. Goldwhite, California State University, Los Angeles

Booklist Review

One of the most spectacular nondiscoveries of all time, cold fusion, makes a strange yet compelling tale. Himself a distinguished physicist, Close traces the tangled events that led first to a stunning public announcement by two chemists at the University of Utah that they had created fusion (the source of the sun's nuclear energy) in room-temperature beakers, and then to the eventual discrediting of their claim. After a brief overview of the nature of fusion and its potential for meeting the world's energy needs, the story (complicated by several subplots) moves from an obscure laboratory in Utah into the halls of Congress, as various groups jockey for control of what they suppose will be untold power and wealth. With lucidity and balance, Close exposes the haste, self-delusion, and carelessness that prompted the two Utah chemists first to boast of an amazing triumph, then to hide and distort evidence demanded by skeptics. This is a book to clarify not only the scientific process but also the political, economic, and cultural pressures under which scientists work. ~--Bryce Christensen

Kirkus Book Review

Close, a physicist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, capably re-creates the ""year of confusion"" that followed the now infamous announcement that cold fusion had been achieved--by his account, an often farcical and always instructive example of of the scientific process on vacation. On March 23, 1989, chemists Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann of the Univ. of Utah called a press conference to announce that they had sustained nuclear fusion in room-temperature heavy water using materials and methods available to any high-school chemistry lab. By that evening, the pair of scientists had become world famous as the implications of super-cheap, environmentally clean, unlimited power were communicated around the globe. In fact, contrary to scientific custom, the news surfaced in business publications such as the Wall Street Journal rather than in a peer-reviewed science journal. The result, played against a background of worldwide anxiety over the greenhouse effect, major oil spills, and general fuel shortages, was a hysteria of celebration devoid of the scientific scrutiny that would have nipped this too-good-to-be-true announcement in the bud. It was only after several months--plus millions of committed dollars and uncounted hours of worldwide research effort--that Fleischmann and Pons' experimental methods, technical descriptions, and scientific deductions were convincingly discredited, and that scientists in general, as Close shows, were left with egg on their faces. An entertaining morality tale, only occasionally overtechnical, pointing out the dangers of mixing ambition and politics with the pursuit of scientific truth. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.