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Technology and Culture 45.2 (2004) 462-463



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Undead Science: Science Studies and the Afterlife of Cold Fusion. By Bart Simon. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2002. Pp. x+252. $60/$22.

Cold fusion was launched in 1989 when chemists Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann announced in a dramatic news conference the discovery of a new energy source. They claimed that with a simple apparatus that included two electrodes—one of them palladium—suspended in heavy water, they had coaxed what was possibly a fusion reaction. This was conceivably a world-changing event; cold fusion became a cause célèbre, with numerous scientists attempting to replicate their results. Despite some confirmations, consensus emerged in 1990 that these experiments offered no true evidence of fusion and that researchers who continued in the field were practicing "pathological science."

Bart Simon's book is an insightful study of the controversy and how knowledge of it has been transmitted. Simon positions himself as a constructivist sociologist, one who believes that scientific knowledge, like all knowledge, is socially produced. He avoids the narrative extremes of both cold fusion's true believers and its opponents, while making a strong case for what he calls a "symmetrical" approach—that is, one based on the assumption that in such controversies one side does not have a monopoly on rationality or truth. Sidestepping philosophical arguments about the relative or absolute nature of scientific knowledge, this approach can offer "a full-fledged sociology of scientific knowledge rather than just a sociology of scientific error" (p. 201).

His method established, Simon charts the media coverage of cold fusion and the evolution of a negative verdict in the scientific community. He makes a convincing argument that the "interpretive charity" with which Fleischmann's and Pons data was first greeted need not have vanished so suddenly. That charity began to run out when it became apparent that their findings did not match current theory, and Fleischmann and Pons suggested that nuclear fusion in a solid state might follow different rules than in plasma. Such bold theorizing led Edward Teller to muse that a new particle surely was involved, one he dubbed "the meshugatron." Tracking the further erosion of charity, Simon quotes physicists in private communications posting odds at 25 to 1 on the likelihood of cold fusion. Soon, failures to confirm cold fusion were regarded as negative replications rather than as failures to follow the proper protocols. Only a few months after the first announcement, a negative consensus formed.

The "death" of cold fusion, however, did not end the scientific study of the subject, and in his last chapters Simon traces how cold fusion enthusiasts developed new social networks. Throughout the 1990s, hundreds of [End Page 462] scientists at different institutions continued to study the anomalous emissions of heat associated with the interaction of hydrogen isotopes in palladium's atomic lattice. The prevailing belief that cold fusion was pathological, however, had resulted in diminished funding, publishing opportunities, and numbers of graduate students willing to assist such research. "Closeted" scientists continued to receive funding for other projects while working on cold fusion. Marginalized in orthodox channels, these scientists sought alternative means of promoting their work and began to publish scientific papers on cold fusion in online forums and magazines; they also began to attend cold fusion conferences that amateurs organized. Some of the participants were well-meaning cranks who had "issues" with mainstream science. Such an approach, though providing support and resources, further marginalized cold fusion as a field, ensuring its invisibility in the larger scientific community.

Simon concludes with the assertion that postconsensus cold fusion research should not be termed "live" but "undead," as it is of uncertain status, akin to a ghost that has materialized after a traumatic death. He believes the concept of "undead" scientific research has not only descriptive but also prescriptive value for the sociology of science and urges that more such studies be undertaken. Simon argues that his contemporaries now mistakenly end studies of scientific controversies with the construction of the new scientific...

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