(4 of 8)
But the reasons for the fusion furor are more complicated than just the prospects of riches and fame. Scientists and university administrators are ; sometimes driven by the same sort of base emotions -- like jealousy and paranoia -- that often motivate less intellectually lofty folks, and the peculiar circumstances of this discovery helped ignite a number of long- smoldering resentments. For one thing, fusion and other subatomic phenomena that are usually studied with giant nuclear reactors and particle accelerators have long been the private domain of physicists. Chemists, on the other hand, were more likely to be studying how to make a better laundry detergent, or so physicists seem to think. It is no surprise, then, that the harshest critics of Pons and his dime-store equipment have been physicists. Retorts Pons: "Chemists are supposed to discover new chemicals. The physicists don't like it when they discover new physicals." In fact, many chemists feel -- with much justification -- that the physicists consider themselves intellectually superior. Says Cheves Walling, a Utah chemist who has developed one theory to explain how the cold-fusion experiment might work: "Chemists resent the fact that physicists can get money for multimillion-dollar experiments that could have gone to chemists to do something more useful."
Still, the cold-fusion combat is not just the physicists vs. the chemists. There is a sense in Salt Lake City that most of Pons' critics are what Utah chemist David Grant calls "the mean bullies from the Eastern establishment." Such snooty folks should remember, he says, that "science is not the domain of one set of colleges or one set of people anymore."
There is also an intense rivalry between the University of Utah -- the U, for short -- and Brigham Young University, located just 50 miles away. Although the U is the state-supported university, Utah's majority Mormon population identifies far more strongly with church-run Brigham Young. It was at least partly because a Brigham Young physicist named Steven Jones was nearing an announcement on cold fusion too that Pons and Fleischmann called their surprise press conference. They had been urged to go public by University of Utah administrators, who were apparently fearful that archrivals at Brigham Young would steal the fusion spotlight. The U has had chronic money troubles recently, and an influx of fusion-research grants, not to mention international glory, could go a long way toward remedying the situation.