Purdue Investigates Professor Who Published ‘Tabletop Fusion’ Study
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind.
Purdue University is investigating whether a scientist removed equipment from a shared lab and took other steps to hinder his colleagues’ efforts to test his claims of producing nuclear fusion in tabletop experiments.
Several Purdue researchers says Dr. Rusi Taleyarkhan, a professor of nuclear engineering, has stymied their attempts to verify — or refute — aspects of his controversial 2002 “bubble fusion” experiments at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
Since late 2003, when Taleyarkhan joined Purdue’s faculty, other scientists at the university have tried unsuccessfully to reproduce his work. In a recently published online article in the journal Nature, they say their confidence in his work has been seriously shaken.
“I am very concerned,” Dr. Tatjana Jevremovic, an assistant professor of nuclear engineering, says in the Nature article.
A statement issued by the university says Taleyarkhan “and his co-authors stand by their findings as reported” in the 2002 work and subsequent research.
