John Bockris
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John Bockris is a former professor of Chemistry at Texas A&M University whose unorthodox views have provoked controversy. The school's inability to fire him has been cited as an example of the problems caused by academic tenure policies.[citation needed] He has authored or edited 15 books and more than 600 papers in the field. In the 1980s, he experimented with cold fusion and in separate research, he claimed to have burned a mixture of potassium nitrate and carbon and salts and come up with gold.
Bockris experimented in cold fusion at the time of the 1988 Pons and Fleischmann affair. Dr. Bockris' research group was one of the few to claim results that matched those of Pons of Fleischmann. There is some evidence of fraudulent 'spiking' of the research cells and a subsequent cover-up.[citation needed]
In 1993, Bockris began experiments in the transmutation of elements, also called alchemy. He funded this new stage in his research with $200,000 from a convicted felon named William Telander.[citation needed] He then brought a "self-described researcher and inventor from Tennessee" named Joe Champion into his lab.[citation needed] Champion instructed Bockris and his assistants in the proper procedures to transform lesser materials into gold. In four separate experiments, they ignited a mixture of potassium nitrate, carbon, and various salts to produce small amounts of gold. However, once Champion left Bockris' group, they could not get the technique to work.[citation needed]
Bockris got a lot of press for these efforts, and other chemists at Texas A&M felt that their reputations were being sullied by the connection. When the alchemy started, their patience ran out. An editorial by Mike Epstein in the Journal of Scientific Exploration describes what happened next:
A petition signed by 23 of the 28 distinguished professors at Texas A&M called on the university provost to strip Dr. Bockris of his title as distinguished professor. The petition follows a letter written by 11 full professors in the chemistry department (out of the department's 38 full professors) calling on Dr. Bockris to resign and remove the "shadow" he has cast over the department. The petition from the distinguished professors said "For a trained scientist to claim, or support anyone else's claim to have transmuted elements is difficult for us to believe and is no more acceptable than to claim to have invented a gravity shield, revived the dead or to be mining green cheese on the moon. We believe that Bockris' recent activities have made the terms 'Texas A&M' and 'Aggie' objects of derisive laughter throughout the world..."
The effort failed and Bockris kept his job. He also won the 1997 Ig Nobel Prize in Physics.
Bockris also tried to organize a conference on Cold Fusion at Texas A&M in that year but the university refused to allow the use of its conference halls. In the words of F.A. Cotton, another professor of chemistry at the school, the seminar was cancelled after the speakers list was published because "they're all kooks and charlatans."
As Newsweek put it, "In the revered name of academic freedom, universities tolerate faculty members who are avowed communists and lifelong fascists, outspoken racists and anti-Semites, radical lesbians and rabid homophobes. But alchemists?"[citation needed]
Bockris subsequently retired.
[edit] References
- LingaFranca.com, November 9, 2000
- Bryan-College Station Eagle, 15 April 1997
- Bad Science: The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion, 1993
- Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol 8/1, 1994
