Lessons from cold fusion, 30 years on

In early 1989, chemists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, made a claim that shocked and galvanized chemists and physicists, and excited society with its potential implications for clean, cheap energy. At a press conference, Fleishmann and Pons announced what would become known as cold fusion — the nuclear fusion of hydrogen at room temperature rather than inside a star. As a recent recruit to the physical sciences editorial team at Nature, to which Fleischmann and Pons had submitted their paper, I got a whirlwind introduction to the politics of scientific controversy.

Source: www.nature.com