washington

A meeting that was to have been held at the US State Department next month to highlight research on unconventional energy sources seems likely to be scaled down or cancelled because of doubts about the credibility of the research.

The First International Conference on Free Energy was to have taken place on 29 and 30 April at the State Department auditorium. The conference is sponsored by the Integrity Research Institute (IRI), a Washington-based group that promotes exotic energy concepts ranging from ‘magnet power’ to ‘assisted nuclear reactions’ — one description of cold fusion.

The department agreed more than a year ago to host the meeting as part of a programme of lunchtime talks meant to encourage dissenting views on foreign policy issues. IRI president Thomas Valone says this would be an appropriate venue because many of the ‘free energy’ concepts to be discussed would have a bearing on US compliance with the Kyoto climate-change treaty.

But the meeting has grown to a two-day conference, with more than a dozen speakers, and hundreds of people attending.

Meanwhile, responsibility for coordinating the Open Forums programme has changed hands twice at the State Department. According to Valone, the most recent individual to take on the job, Cora Foley of the department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, questioned whether the department should support the conference shortly after assuming her post a few weeks ago.

Sources say Foley and other department officials have received e-mails and calls from mainstream scientists asking why the department is lending its name to a meeting they argue has little scientific merit.

After a meeting between Foley, Valone and others on Monday (8 March), the department remained undecided as to whether it will cancel or curtail its involvent in the conference. One source said the organizers were considering moving it to a hotel.

Valone, who is also a patent examiner with the US Patent and Trademark Office, found himself in hot water with his own agency last year when he sent out an Internet notice to “all able-bodied infinite energy technologists”, inviting them to apply for examiner jobs at the agency and thereby “infiltrate” the office to encourage openness to unconventional ideas. Valone says he was chastised by the patent office, and admits he made a mistake in sending out the notice.

Robert Park of the American Physical Society, who often ridicules cold fusion and similar concepts in a weekly electronic newsletter on science policy, says he finds nothing wrong with a conference on free energy. “The problem is giving some sort of State Department imprimatur to it that makes it look like the federal government is taking this seriously,” he says. “That's what these people are lusting for.”

In fact, says Valone, one Australian researcher who planned to attend has used the State Department's involvement to try to enlist the participation of his government. Valone had hoped the department's endorsement “might have some effect worldwide”.

The Department of Energy refused to act as a co-sponsor. One energy department researcher who still planned to attend, David Goodwin of the Office of High Energy and Nuclear Physics, says the agency felt “some apprehension about the cold fusion speakers”, and agrees “it would be awkward for us” to sponsor the meeting.