NASA

You spot an old problem, that many organizations are too much afraid of bad publicity ...
anyway their experts are interested.

This is where the support of Airbus Chief Scientist (without similar internal opposition) is not so common.
On the contrary some companies like Shell have actively done extensive review .

The people who were there were free from media opinion.

You can blame consensus of terror.
Even Mats could not be there officially.
No press was covering that meeting (except the local news, from very far), not even to criticize.

People present in the name of their company were the boss.

I think using the groupthink, the consensus of terror, against LENR reality, is considering the tail is moving the dog.

Mutual assured delusion is better than consensus of terror.
this expression add the obseravtion of bullying agains dissenters that MAD imply.

I agree that without considering Groupthink theory, the consensus of terror seems a bit exaggerated, but when you see it at work, it is simply descriptive.

http://www.princeton.edu/~rbenabou/papers/Groupthink IOM 2012_07_02 BW.pdf
http://web.stanford.edu/~kcook/groupthink.html

John bockris : Example of Bullying against leading electrochemist, who dissent :
http://www.lenr-forum.com/old-forum-static/t-1634.html

the result is that :
https://www.lenr-forum.com/for…ss-despite-perceived-rea/

that Nasa allows GRC or Nari (doug wells) to make research on LENR is incredibly strong support in that context of CoT.
Same for NRL, SRI,ENEA...

I agree that funding is small and hard, but Sugar report was funded and done with boeing.
Doug wells is funded

you are right, research agency who are not free top fund non consensus research, foudn that letting people having local information, is a way to make good research despite public opinion.

The mindguard you cite are exactly the toxic armed arms of the CoT I talk of.

this is how it works, and it works well, even among the military and corps, who don't stop but burry their research as you explain.
(DoD fund PdD research as "nanotechnologies"... )

anyway this is not an argument for or against LENR. this is just supporting the evidence of a CoT, justified or not.

The things to look at is the evidence, and since 1990 is is good enough to make research.

Since the broken papers of Morrison, Lewis and Hansen, there is no serious critic of cold fusion long line of evidences . and after correction, those 3 papers are not serious (Morrison is not even wrong, but incoherent, and lewis and hansen are simply plain wrong).

As Ed Storms and McKubre, this lack of quality critic is a problem, maybe the worst effect of the CoT.
Even Shanahan could not be peer reviewed, as his even critic paper was too radioactive (maybe too bad too).
McKubre debunked it, but some neutral electrochemist opinion would have more seriously confirmed the position of McKubre.

The absence and bad quality of critics is a problem.
Generic "dead clock right twice a day" attack provide nothing as they give no specific direction. In Lugano and DGT case, the skeptics have attacked on a dozen of fronts, with 90% of unproven/refuted theories and 2 theories finally confirmed by "believers".

Conspiracy theories does not help, as they are too generic and prevent analysis of data to detect artifacts.

we need good critics, this mean people who accept some facts, and just question on others.

If a pretended skeptic can admit that LENR is proven, and test was well wired on the electric side, then we can discuss of emissivity.

GSVIT was not even able to use available data to compute the lowest possible COP of Lugano, because their clear intent was just to attack, not to do science. They did not use the calibration, the step of power, using reasonable assumption on their theory... they just said, it can be bad... dump all.

we need real skeptic, not mindguards.
this is science, engineering, not football match.