A remarkable thing happened today. Tonight's edition of 60 Minutes, on CBS, confirmed previous reporting I did on cold fusion research here and here, relying heavily on many of the same sources I used, including SRI's Dr. Michael McKubre.

The dust up over cold fusion research was one of most controversial topics I ever covered. As I reported at the time, I was appalled and mystified by the vicious smears and character assassination aimed at scientists working on the experiments, attacks that should have no place whatsoever in science -- or media. There was a rush to halt federal funding and what appeared to me to be a public smear campaign against virtually anyone involved, including some very well respected scientists. It may not have been coordinated but it was certainly a gang attack. I never saw anything like it. I took risks with my own career by continuing to report on the subject long after most others stopped. More than one editor told me I was making a mistake by not dropping it and one cited it as a reason for dropping my longstanding and well-read column. But I was fascinated by the subject and persisted.

Now, twenty years later, 60 Minutes comes along with an extensively reported piece that says my earliest reports basically had it right, as did those of Wired writer Charles Platt, who was virtually the only other "mainstream" journalist to continue to follow the story after the initial interest died down.

You'd think I'd be breaking out the champagne. But instead I keep thinking about my old source, Dr. Eugene Mallove, who kept this story alive when others wanted to kill it only to himself die under mysterious circumstances. What a pity Gene did not live to see this day.

The 60 Minutes report concludes with a heart-breaking interview with Dr. Martin Flieschmann, one of the two scientists, along with Stanley Pons, whose work on cold fusion in 1989 sparked the controversy that destroyed their careers. The 60 Minutes reporter asks Flieschmann how he felt knowing that there have now been many successful subsequent peer-reviewed replications of his work, including most recently by the U.S. Department of Defense, scientists in Israel and an independent verification obtained by CBS. But Flieschmann could only muster a weak smile and sad laugh, focusing instead on the lost opportunity of the last twenty years. Indeed.

Personally, I never understood why there was such a rush to shut down the research. And I still don't. Even if the cold fusion claims don't pan out, wouldn't it be a good idea to spend more money on basic research in the field of materials sciences, including to further investigate this reported phenomena, when materials sciences are so essential to the development of a variety of alternative energy technologies?