I came across his name recently in Popular Mechanics (I know, it’s a ridiculous mag) and while doing a bit of background research, I noticed in 9 out of 10 websites he’s referred to as “Hal Puthoff UFO Psychic”, not exactly a desirable title, unless you’re one of the wackos who believe in everything. While he does appear to have an impressive list of credentials, he also apparently has been involved in research in (and believes in) remote viewing & other such nonsense. What’s the deal here? How many non-wackos are involved in ZPE?
If you’re talking about the zero point energy that might be responsible for the accelerated expansion of the universe, then there are many non-wackos. However, I don’t know of any ZPE “researchers” who are looking at it for power generation, except for the wacko crowd.
Puthoff and a co-worker named Targ did a lot of bad science at Stanford Research Institute(?), involving remote viewing, etc. The Skeptical Inquirer has published articles debunking their work.
For particulars, try the Skeptical Inquirer web site.
By the way, do you have your Skeptical Inquirer “I Doubt It!” stickers? I have mine!
In James Randi’s book Flim Flam! he had a whole chapter about Targ and Puthoff called “The Laurel And Hardy of Psi.” That was over 20 years ago, and I’m surprised to learn that Puthoff is still at it.
Puthoff’s career seems to have divided into three phases: his early physics research, the involvement with parapsychology at SRI and then his ZPE stuff over the last decade or so.
I’ve never really been able to get a handle on how significant his early work ever was, though it’s always talked up in sympathetic coverage of him. Where his career does become widely documented is during the collaboration with Targ. Randi’s most thorough account of the start of that is in his The Truth About Uri Geller (1975; Prometheus, 1982). Martin Gardner has also often written about them over the years. The essays in The New Age (Prometheus, 1991) would be a good place to start, particularly since it includes his piece on the relevance of Puthoff’s involvement with Scientology. Pretty much any discussion of parapsychology in the 1970s, pro- or anti-, will also get into what happened at SRI. But even other parapsychologists have often condemned that research; see, for instance, John Beloff’s comments in Parapsychology: A Concise History (Athlone, 1993).
This all seems to have had little effect on the hearing he’s received for his ZPE research. The biggest splash that’s made amongst physicists was in 1994 when, in collaboration with Haisch and Rueda, he published a paper on the origins of inertia in Phys.Rev.A. Though what caught peoples’ attention was more the coverage this got in Science. As one of the quantum field theorists in the department I was working in at the time, I was being asked about the Science piece by most of my non-QFT colleagues. Interestingly, not one of them was aware of who Puthoff was or his controversial track record until I explained it to them.
Of course, none of that background - while interesting - was particularly relevant to the merits of the paper. I have to confess I never really saw the point of the proposal - the idea didn’t really explain anything and the paper didn’t seem to lead to any specific predictions. In the event, it was the other QFT postdoc in the department who took on the task of wading through the algebra in detail to fully understand the methods. His conclusion was that the actual calculations amounted to no more than a roundabout and ugly way of doing a mass renormalisation. There are dozens of ways of doing that; a novel method of doing it is usually of some interest and probably publishable, but it’ll rarely be earthshattering. Lee rather regreted having had to waste an afternoon of his time establishing this.
As for ZPE generally, in a sense quantum field theory is entirely devoted to studying it. However, I can’t think of single research physicist who’s published on QFT - other than Puthoff - who believes it could be utilised as an energy source.
There’s a Martin Gardner Skeptical Inquirer column specifically devoted to Puthoff and ZPE.