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Deryagin himself remains unbowed. At a recent polywater conference at Lehigh University, he acknowledged that his original specimens may have contained impurities, but insisted that polywater continues to exhibit its strange properties after the contaminants have been removed. Deryagin and his supporters will have a hard time proving their case until more polywater exists. Currently, the total amount available from all the world's labs would hardly fill a vodka glass. Davis, for one, doubts whether anyone should sweat over the problem any longer. "American scientists have been wasting their time studying this subject," he wrote in Chemical & Engineering News, "unless, of course, it can be defined as a topic of water pollution and waste disposal."
* So called because its molecules are believed to be linked in a chemical chain, or polymer.