Some scientists had announced they could not reproduce the results. A few believed they were achieving cold fusion. Others pointed to what they considered flaws in the Utah work. Critics became increasingly vocal, with some denouncing Pons and Fleischmann's findings as "pathological science." "A group of scientists requested a meeting with the Office of Science," Decker said in an e-mail. "I met with them sometime last fall. They told me about a lot of research on cold fusion that has been done since the last review that was conducted about 15 years ago. "They presented some data and asked for a review of the scientific research that has been conducted." These were from "excellent scientific institutions and have excellent credentials," Decker wrote. "It was my personal judgment that their request for a review was reasonable." The office will pass along the material they provided, to reviewers with the expertise to evaluate it. He expects the reviewers will spend a couple of days hearing presentations, then will individually offer their opinions on the science. Brigham Young University scientist Steven F. Jones, whose own research preceded the announcement by Pons and Fleischmann, said of the new DOE review, "I think it's high time, actually," adding that "there's a lot going on" in the field.

Jones, a professor of physics and astronomy, never claimed impressive energy outputs in his own studies. He has been looking into unusual findings. He was the lead speaker at the conference last August in Cambridge, Mass., where new findings were announced.

He said he wants to make a clear distinction, and always has, "between the nuclear work which we pioneered" and the claims of excess heat production. "I think those are the two camps, and those camps persist to this day, actually," he said. "I'm a bit disappointed that the physics community has by and large overlooked this work and denigrated it," Jones said. But some physicists expressed interest in the field, he added.

Eugene Mallove, editor of New Energy magazine and a supporter of fusion research since 1989, is excited about the DOE review.

"It turns out that the phenomena we're talking about are far broader than the original discovery," he said in a telephone interview.

What Pons and Fleischmann came upon should not be called fusion, he thinks. Instead, it is "a new form of energy" with mysterious nuclear aspects.

"There undoubtedly is fusion going on of some kind, but it was not plasma fusion," he said. Pons and Fleischmann themselves said it was not plasma (hot) fusion, he added. Perhaps the best term for what is happening is "low-energy nuclear reactions," he said.

Mallove hopes the DOE review will turn policy toward funding the new areas of research and away from the multibillion-dollar chase after hot fusion. The country and the world have paid dearly because the 1989 discovery was not properly followed up, he believes.

"There should never have been a war against cold fusion, but there was one," he said. "And it's coming to an end, a screeching halt."

Among the discoveries Mallove cites are Japanese experiments that seemingly border on alchemy. Elements are changing into other elements in these experiments, he said, and the research has been published in a prestigious Japanese peer-reviewed physics journal.

John Huizenga, a retired professor of chemistry at the University of Rochester, N.Y. and co-chairman of the DOE 20-member panel that reviewed cold-fusion claims in 1989 is against having a review.