Make a mistaken claim in any branch of science, and endeavours in that field may be tainted for years. Faced with two such claims, the field is definitely in trouble. And that now seems to be the case for so-called "tabletop fusion". In 1989 Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann claimed to have achieved "cold fusion"-nuclear fusion in apparatus built on a laboratory bench. Their work, however, was discredited and the field is now a no-go area for most physicists. This week, fresh doubts emerged about a related claim to have used bubbles generated by ultrasound to create fusion. If these are substantiated, the idea of tabletop fusion will, indeed, become a pariah.
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