A Purdue University physicist who claimed to have demonstrated a tabletop fusion process that could revolutionize energy production was guilty of research misconduct in his efforts to demonstrate independent reproduction of his findings, a university committee said Friday.

The panel did not investigate whether Rusi Taleyarkhan fabricated his widely publicized and highly controversial research, but whether he intentionally misled the scientific community in claiming that his work had been replicated independently.

It has been six years since Taleyarkhan’s original publication, and no one else has been able to duplicate his work, said physicist Michael J. Saltmarsh, who is retired from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and had tried unsuccessfully to reproduce the work.