Documenting Cold Fusion: An Urgent Project to Preserve Historical and Sociological Materials from Fast-Moving Controversial Science

该项目将收集，存储和编目广泛的 有关宣布“冷聚变”的材料 1989年3月23日，犹他州大学。 这些文件 在持续和激烈的辩论中收集， 化学家和物理学家--将使学者们能够更好地 “科学”就是“当它发生时”。 不管是不是最近 实验声明被定义为有效，该事件是一个 为历史学家、社会学家、政策学家提供战略研究场所 分析师、传播学者和其他对如何 科学是有用的 冷熔盒的几个特点使其成为特殊的 兴趣 科学家之间的交流模式 由于最近的电子和计算机技术， 创新（传真机、计算机邮件网络、电子 公告牌），这几乎可以让即时 事实和谣言的传播，引起了麻烦 有关“同行审查”制度可行性的问题 与传统的印刷传播形式， 期刊 扩大理解的同时承诺 自然界和基于冷聚变的有利可图的技术 模糊了“纯科学”和“应用科学”之间的界限。 在 与此同时，大众传媒在 引起了全国对冷聚变的关注， 科学家们自己也利用大众媒体来交流 在他们的专业同行中。 为了让学者能够研究这些和其他 第一个问题，今天必须收集原始资料。 与 如此多的通信通过电子手段进行--相对而言， 与印刷品相比是短暂的--必须迅速采取行动 在有价值的材料被“清除”之前， 迷路了 在此之前收集这些数据尤为重要 共识已经形成，事实已经解决。 后来 经验告诉我们，这些记录将“重建”历史事件。 往往是创造性的方式。

This project will collect, store and catalog a wide range of materials pertaining to the announcement of "cold fusion" at the University of Utah on March 23, 1989. These documents -- collected in the midst of on-going and heated debates among chemists and physicists -- will enable scholars to better understand science "as it happens". Whether or not recent experimental claims are defined as valid, the episode is a strategic research site for historians, sociologists, policy analysts, communication scholars and others interested in how science works. Several features of the cold fusion case make it of special interest. Communication patterns among scientists have been altered dramatically by recent electronic and computer innovations (FAX machines, computer mail networks, electronic bulletin boards), which have allowed virtually instantaneous communication of both fact and rumor, raising troubling questions about the viability of "peer review" systems associated with traditional forms of print communication in scientific journals. The simultaneous promise of an enlarged understanding of nature and a lucrative technology based on cold fusion have blurred the boundary between "pure" and "applied" science. At the same time, the mass media have played a fundamental role in bringing the cold fusion controversy to national attention and scientists themselves have used the mass media for communicating among their professional peers. In order for scholars to be able to investigate these and other topics, primary source materials must be collected today. With so much communication moving by electronic means -- relatively ephemeral compared to print -- it is imperative to act quickly before valuable materials are "purged", and thus irretrievably lost. It is especially important to collect these data before consensus has formed and the facts have been settled. Later accounts, experience tells us, will "reconstruct" the events in often creative ways.