Two chemists announced at the University of Utah that they had sustained nuclear fusion -- the power that makes the sun burn -- in a beaker of water at room temperature. Astonishing in its simplicity, the experiment was hailed in a university news release as having the "potential to provide an inexhaustible source of energy."
Having commanded the world's attention, many Utahans embraced "cold fusion" with unbridled boosterism only to see the giddy zeal succeeded by disappointment and even embarrassed defensiveness when other scientists failed to confirm the breakthrough. Today the scientific phenomenon remains a mystery -- intriguing, inexplicable and apparently no closer to commercial exploitation than it ever was.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/ ... 1a2dd9215/In the case of cold fusion, when scientists elsewhere last fall appeared to breathe some hope back into the Utah experiments conducted by chemists B. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, an editorial in the Deseret News pounced on the news: "The vindication of Pons and Fleischmann is a vindication of Utah and the University of Utah." But soon after, a Department of Energy panel concluded that the Utah researchers' results failed to warrant special federal funding.
In 2022 when the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced that they achieved nuclear fusion, it was a long process that included outside scientists who critiqued and confirmed their experiment.
https://www.llnl.gov/news/national-igni ... n-ignition
Beware the media hype.