鈥淏UBBLE fusion鈥�, once hailed as a potential green-energy source, is mired in controversy again. Rusi Taleyarkhan, who claimed to have achieved nuclear fusion by popping bubbles in a solvent, has been found guilty of research misconduct.
In 2002, Taleyarkhan, then at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and now at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, claimed in Science that his team could create bubbles that trigger nuclear fusion by bombarding a cool solvent with neutrons and sound waves. When others failed to replicate the work, a Purdue committee investigated allegations of misconduct involving Taleyarkhan in 2006, and cleared him of wrongdoing.
Yet a second investigation began in May 2007 when further, secret allegations were made. Last week, the Purdue panel found two instances of misconduct. First, he added an author who did not significantly contribute to a subsequent paper aiming to replicate the result. 鈥淭he sole apparent motivation for the addition was a desire to overcome a reviewer鈥檚 criticism鈥� that the experiments should not have been carried out by one person, . Second, in a 2006 paper in Physical Review Letters, he stated that the results reported in his original paper 鈥渉ave now been independently confirmed鈥�. This assertion was false and constituted misconduct, the panel concluded.
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鈥淭he sole motivation for adding the author was a desire to overcome reviewer criticism鈥�
Taleyarkhan, who could not be reached for comment, was cleared of seven further allegations, including plagiarism and allowing a misleading press release.
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