• Resource Planning Associates, Cambridge, MA, 1974­75.  LaViolette worked as a staff consultant for a Massachusetts environmental and energy consulting firm.  He conducted a comparative study of several federal agency product regulatory programs as a way of advising the EPA on procedures for implementing a program to regulate the manufacture of recyclable beverage containers.
• Solar energy consulting, 1977.  In 1977, as project consultant on solar energy for the Fourth Report to Club of Rome, he was the first to demonstrate that a solar electric power plant would be cheaper to build than a nuclear plant.^[60]  His conclusions, which were underwritten by the UN, received media attention in both the U.S.^{[61- 63]}  and Greece.^{[64- 69]}  In the late 1970's he was listed as a UN solar energy expert,^[70] and he also advised the Greek National Power Authority on the feasibility of photovoltaic power production.  In 2004 - 2005, LaViolette carried out solar energy research with the Starburst Foundation using the facilities of the California Water Institute at California State University Fresno.  He built and tested the performance of a new type of advective solar water still he had invented.
• U. S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Arlington, VA, 1998-99.  He served as a patent examiner examining patents on magnetic resonance imaging technology.  While working at the USPTO, the Unofficial Gazette, a newsletter published by Patent and Trademark Office Society and which was regularly distributed to all patent examiners, carried a favorable spotlight story about the newly hired LaViolette, his books, and his ideas.^[71]  This article catapulted LaViolette into the limelight, also bringing him to the attention of conservative political elements in the physics community, such as Robert Park, APS Director of Public Information, who was a devout First Law enthusiast.   Shortly afterward Park posted a cynical news item on the American Physical Society (APS) website disapproving of LaViolette's hiring on the grounds that he was an "original" thinker.^[72]
   Two months later, in January, LaViolette had placed a link on his personal website (etheric.com) which was directed to a webpage describing an upcoming alternative energy conference to be held at the State Department and which was to include a scientist speaking about his cold fusion research.  As a result, Park and APS conservative Peter Zimmerman soon concluded that LaViolette must be collaborating with the conference's organizer Tom Valone, who also was a Patent Office examiner, and that they both were cold fusion supporters. Even though cold fusion is today recognized by scientists as a real physical phenomenon, Park and Zimmerman were at the time convinced that cold fusion was bogus. So they began an extensive smear campaign to get the State Department conference canceled and the two examiners removed from their jobs.  On March 22nd Zimmerman hosted a "pseudoscience session" at the spring American Physical Society meeting and there stated openly that he and Robert Park were working to "expose and purge anyone at the patent office who sympathizes with cold fusion."^[73]  APS internet postings written by Park chiding the two examiners were emailed to high ranking management at the Patent Office with the aim of embarrassing the Patent Office into firing them.  The USPTO apparently bowed to their wishes.  On March 24, 1999, two days after the APS meeting and one day after the email barrage to USPTO management had reached its peak, LaViolette was given notice by his supervisor of his termination and Valone's division director initiated proceedings to terminate him as well. As a result, Valone was forced to leave the Patent Office some months later.