Cold fusion announced in Utah

MAR 23 1989

Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons announced at a University of Utah press conference that they had produced nuclear fusion in a tabletop electrochemical cell at room temperature. The university pushed the announcement forward to establish priority, bypassing the normal route of publication and peer review. Replications failed worldwide, and by 1 May the American Physical Society heard eight of nine leading speakers declare the claim dead. Often grouped with deliberate scientific hoaxes, but the evidence points to experimental error and calorimetry mistakes rather than fraud. Fleischmann and Pons believed their results and never retracted.