ICCF-18 “Cold Fusion” Conference Begins Next Week
Chairman Robert Duncan
July 17, 2013 – By Steven B. Krivit –
The 18th International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science takes place next week at the University of Missouri. The conference is organized by Robert Duncan, vice chancellor for research, and his wife, Annette Sobel, assistant to the provost for strategic opportunities.
Duncan’s offer to host ICCF-18 fills a large void in the field. According to the tradition of rotating continents among ICCF conferences, last year’s ICCF-17 should have been in North America.
But during the discussion at ICCF-16 conference in Chennai, India, no North American researcher was in a position to offer to host the next international cold fusion conference. Nobody had the financial resources or access to sponsors. Instead, the conference took place in Korea.
Funding and recognition has been difficult for these researchers. A significant reason is that many of them give the field the appearance of pseudoscience. There is no scientific evidence for LENR as “cold fusion,” yet many longtime researchers in the field remain wedded to the belief that deuterium nuclei can overcome the Coulomb barrier at appreciable rates at room temperature.
Nevertheless, two significant scientific events have occurred in the last two years with LENR researchers who are independent of the “cold fusion” researchers.
Last year, a LENR colloquium took place at one of the most prestigious nuclear physics institutions in the world, CERN, the European Centre for Nuclear Research.
On March 22, 2012, CERN hosted an invited colloquium, “Overview of Theoretical and Experimental Progress in Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR),” which took place in CERN’s council chamber.
On Nov. 14, 2012, for the first time in a decade, the American Nuclear Society hosted a low-energy nuclear reaction session. It took place at the ANS Winter meeting in San Diego, Calif. The session was requested by the interim executive director of the ANS.
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In contrast to the legitimate scientific research taking place in the field, a variety of companies with questionable business ethics and practices have popped up in the last few years. Some of these companies have claimed to have commercially viable devices. They also have put on public demonstrations, but they have convinced nobody in the mainstream science community or in the business world.
Cold fusion theorist Yeong Kim, professor of physics at Purdue University, is the ICCF-18 conference co-chair. Duncan had initially listed Purdue as a sponsoring partner of the conference, but in March, Nicholas Giordano, the head of the Purdue University Physics Department, told New Energy Times that was an error.
Around the same time, Duncan changed the name of the conference from “cold fusion” to “condensed matter nuclear science.”
The conference Web site is here, and the program is listed here. In an unusual departure from conventional scientific conferences, organizers have decided not to publish a book of abstracts; instead, they plan to publish separate abstracts for each of the oral papers. The organizers are also not displaying the abstracts for the poster papers on the conference Web site.
New Energy Times sent an e-mail to Beth Fisher, program administrator for the conference, and asked why.
“Based on recommendations from the ICCF-18 International Advisory Committee and to save money,” Fisher wrote, “abstracts will only be available on the Web site. Abstracts are linked to individual talks.”
For the convenience of readers, New Energy Times has obtained the abstracts for oral as well as poster papers and published them in an unofficial book of abstracts for the conference.
The selections for oral papers have been unusual for this year’s conference. Several key researchers in the field are either not attending or have been given only the opportunity to display a poster and tell their colleagues about their work during the coffee breaks. There is no scheduled session for these researchers to formally announce their work in front of the conference attendees.
New Energy Times has contacted several experienced LENR researchers who are not listed in either the oral sessions or poster session and learned that they did, in fact, submit abstracts, but when they found out that they were given posters instead, they withdrew their papers.
Duncan began working at the university in the fall of 2008. Shortly before he began his appointment, CBS-TV’s “60 Minutes” invited him to look at the “cold fusion” claims of the now-defunct Energetics Technologies Co. in Omer, Israel.
Duncan appeared on “60 Minutes” in 2009, endorsed Energetics’ work, and said he believed cold fusion was real, though he carefully avoided using the term “cold fusion.”
Soon after his “60 Minutes” appearance, Duncan and his wife took paid consulting appointments at Star Scientific Ltd. of Australia, according to a former investor in the company.
Star Scientific proposes that muon-catalyzed fusion is a viable energy solution even though experts have known for many decades that far more energy is required to create muons than the heat they produce.
Duncan spoke encouragingly about the Star Scientific work, and the investor funded a second round for the company.
In the fall of 2009, Duncan gave a presentation at ICCF-15 in Rome, Italy, called “An Outsider’s View of the Fleischmann-Pons Effect.” He proposed that muon-catalyzed fusion could explain the excess heat that Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons and their followers have observed in low-energy nuclear reactions. Duncan did not publicly disclose his affiliation with Star Scientific.
Steven E. Jones, a former professor of physics at Brighham Young University and an early researcher of muon-catalyzed fusion, will give a poster presentation at ICCF-18.
In 1989, Jones engaged in questionable practices as a reviewer of a Department of Energy funding proposal written by Fleischmann and Pons. After reviewing the proposal, he attempted to file a patent and give a conference paper for a discovery of electrolytic cold fusion in advance of Fleischmann and Pons.
Before 2008, Duncan had no experience in the field of LENRs, and he apparently has done none of his own LENR research.
What Duncan brings to the field however, is money, thanks to a January 2012 $5.5 million gift from Sidney Kimmel, founder of Jones Apparel, to be given over five years to the University of Missouri. Duncan’s involvement in the field also makes significant university resources available to low-energy nuclear reaction researchers and conference attendees.
The Star Scientific investor never saw encouraging results, and once the money from Kimmel came to the University, he didn’t see Duncan at Star Scientific anymore.
Related News Stories:
NRL Will Host Colloquium on “Cold Fusion”
Duncan’s Scientific Method Excludes Widom-Larsen Theory
Duncan’s Promotion of Rossi: A Tremendous Disservice
Vice Chancellor Duncan to Purchase Two Energy Catalyzers
2009 CBS-TV Program Wrongly Reported DARPA LENR Endorsement
[Note: On July 19, conference organizers provided links to the poster abstracts on the ICCF-18 Web site.]
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