I was disappointed to see a letter promoting a pseudo-scientific fringe theory (Cold fusion may be a viable energy alternative to end reliance on fossil fuels, Letters, 28 January). Many scientists have tried and failed to reproduce Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons’s initial report of cold fusion. After years of intense scrutiny, the mainstream scientific community overwhelmingly concluded by the early 1990s that cold fusion was not a credible idea supported by experimental evidence – a conclusion that stands after three decades of research.
The authors of the letter to the Guardian suggest that cold fusion research is now being suppressed from publication. In reality, credible, rigorous studies continue to be published in reputable journals (such as a 2019 study in Nature), but none of them has successfully observed cold fusion. The letter claims that companies have “been able to make these reactions work quite reliably”, but do not provide any evidence to support this.
The climate crisis requires immediate action, but those actions must be based on rigorous, reproducible science. It would be wonderful to live in a universe where cold fusion was a reality, but we cannot wave a magic wand and change the laws of nature.
Dr Philip Thomas
Postdoctoral research fellow, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Exeter