The bizarre saga of Rusi Taleyarkhan (which I've mentioned before) keeps getting stranger. Previously, Purdue University had announced that it conducted an investigation of Taleyarkhan's work and cleared him of any misconduct, without saying, well, anything much about the investigation. Now, after pressure from Congress on the question, the New York Times reports that they're opening a new investiagation.
The letter from Congress that triggered this contains the first real details of the earlier investigation, including this absolutely boggling couple of paragraphs:
Up to now, Purdue has focused on two scientific papers published in 2005 that Dr. Taleyarkhan hailed as independent confirmation of his sonofusion results. But the experiments, performed in February 2004, were done using Dr. Taleyarkhan's apparatus at Purdue, not at an independent laboratory, and one of the authors, Yiban Xu, joined Dr. Taleyarkhan's group as a postdoctoral researcher a few months later. A second author, Adam Butt, a graduate student, also joined Dr. Taleyarkhan's group.
Further, in response to a fact-finding committee convened by the nuclear engineering school, Mr. Butt signed a statement that he did not participate in any of the experiments or the analysis of the data and that he had been added as an author to one of the papers a week before submission and was not aware that he was on the second paper until a week before it was presented at a conference. Dr. Xu declined to answer questions about the papers, but the committee noted similarities between them and several of Dr. Taleyarkhan's.
I really didn't think this could get weirder. Meanwhile, Taleyarkhan is attempting to play the race card:
Dr. Taleyarkhan said last night in an e-mail message that the subcommittee's report represents "a gross travesty of justice." He asked, "Where are the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons of the Asian community during this episode that has caused this biased and openly one-sided smear campaign?"
But, hey, he's got Brian Josephson on his side. Pity he's the sort of supporter you'd rather have lurking in email.
This whole thing is just kind of sad. When I first heard the story, I thought there was probably something real and interesting going on in the experiments. The failure of other experiments to confirm any of the findings was sort of disappointing, but Taleyarkhan's explanations and follow-up experiments are just loaded with kook signifiers. If he wanted to convince people there was something dodgy going on here, he couldn't do much better than he's done.
I'm still inclined to believe that they really saw something with an actual physical explanation, but the chances that it was really fusion seem vanishingly small at this point.
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I'm thinking he did it to get hot chicks.
He sounds like a scoundrel. Trying to blame it on his race is just absurd.
Purdue may have been able to avoid all this if they'd at least explained what their own internal investigation procedure was. Instead, they basically said, "Trust us, everything is fine. And we can't tell you more than that without violating the confidentiality of the grievance process." That's inane. In investigations of possible scientific misconduct where the data has been published in the open literature, you have to have some transparency in the investigatory process, and investigations have to be done by people who don't have an inherent conflict of interest. This is the whole point of "blue ribbon commissions" and such.
Run your clock back a year ago. He was accused of spiking his experiment with Californium. Turns out that that whole assault was based on theoretical calculations and speculation. As much as some people wanted to "prove" that he had committed experimental fraud, they have so far, failed to make their case.
The devil is in the details -- there is much more to this story than reported by the Times. An inquisitive person who looks at the larger span of events, http://newenergytimes.com/BubbleTrouble/BFControversy.htm might wonder what is really going on.
As someone who has spent the last six years investigating controversial science, I have a good sense of the difficulties of new, poorly-understood science.
The challenge of replication in unchartered scientific territory is not to be taken lightly and readily dismissed as "evidence" of non-science. Many people in the field of science, when pushed, will admit that one can never prove a negative, no matter how may attempts fail.
I am also keenly aware of the multitude of human issues in high-profile science; among these, intellectual property, intellectual primacy, competition for funding and grants.
The bold, outspoken criticisms of respected scientists in the popular media do not always make it easy for the lay reader to distinguish between science fact and science politics.
The important question to ask here, is, why all the fuss, and why a Congressional inquiry about who is listed on a science paper?
Steven Krivit
Editor, New Energy Times
"...biased and openly one-sided smear campaign?"
Hey, that's what Paul Wolfowitz said
Steven Krivit
Editor, New Energy Times
Hm.
I'm not familiar with the "New Energy Times". Would anyone more familiar with them be willing to fill me in on who they are and what, if anything, their reputation is?