FYI, I have read McKubre's 2009 paper several times and it certainly indicates good evidence for a real physical effect and furthermore delineates conditions under which the effect could be observed. Where I go off the rails is the fact that in the ensuing years, it does not appear that the work discussed in the paper has been expanded or improved upon.
No, that is not what you said at first. You said: "The hypothetical
advantages of cold fusion as you imagine it are impressive. As far as I can
see, those advantages come from rather radical assumptions about things that
are highly speculative and not backed up by actual results."
That's completely wrong. The claims are based on actual experiments, and actual results, not speculation. There is far more real-world proof that cold fusion can be made practical than there is for, say, plasma fusion or Star-wars missile defense.
Now you have changed your tune and you are saying you doubt this because there has been no progress, but you ignore the reasons why there has been no progress. Apparently you think that dead people can expand or improve upon their work.
Given that I am not all that interested in the subject, I naively thought The Librarian could perhaps provide a synopsis of the more recent history of the subject so I might decide whether I want to learn more.
I did provide a synopsis of recent history. You don't believe me, so you should read original sources. Here it is again:
In the last 10 or 20 years there has been no progress because practially no experiments have been done. Because the researchers are dead of old age. Dead people cannot do experiments. Other researchers were fired, or like Pons driven out the country. You have not read ICCF papers, so you supposed they report new research. If you had bothered to read them you would have seen they rehash old data and talk about theory, and report nothing new.
And stop blathering about how you can't decide if you want to learn more. You are not fooling anyone. What you want to do is pretend to be a high and mighty intellect, oh so objective, fair and balanced, who might deign to take interest if only we grovel and spoon feed you whatever you ask for, again and again. If you put one-tenth the effort into actually learning that you put into boasting how objective balanced and brilliant you are -- so brilliant you can pontificate about a subject you haven't bothered to study! -- you would already know the answers to the questions you pretend to ask.