In this context - your statement is reaching too far.
You are using a wide variety of reported and published anomalies in systems: most metal lattices, but many other systems as well. the authors of the papers describing these anomalies have argued that the only explanation for the anomalous results is cold fusion.
I am not using a wide variety. Only the metal lattice ones. Actually, only the bulk Pd-D ones, which were confirmed in 180 labs, in several hundred tests. There are many other systems, as you say, such as powder, LEC, and glow discharge, but they have not been proved to be the same phenomenon. Some have not been shown to be nuclear fusion. Some have not been replicated much, so they might be experimental error. I exclude them all when I assert that cold fusion must be real, and it must be nuclear fusion.
However, there is no predictive cold fusion theory yet that explains the results. And as you well know those arguments are not found convincing by most scientists.
Most scientists know nothing about this. They have no idea what instruments are used, what results are obtained, and what conclusions are drawn. They have no basis to judge. Their opinions are worthless -- without any scientific basis or validity. You might as well ask policemen, carpenters, or stock brokers whether cold fusion is real.
Most scientists who have performed experiments are sure that cold fusion is real. They are the only ones qualified to judge. I have not taken a poll of experts who have read the literature, but I have the impression that most of them are also convinced cold fusion is real. For example, as I wrote:
Prof. Heinz Gerischer was a leading electrochemist and the Director of the Max Planck Institute for Physical Chemistry. He reviewed the evidence in 1991 and concluded “there [are] now undoubtedly overwhelming indications that nuclear processes take place in metal alloys.” For a distinguished professor this is emphatic. “Undoubtedly overwhelming” is shouting through a megaphone.
https://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJlessonsfro.pdf
An informed opinion from Gerischer outweighs 1,000,000 ignorant comments by scientists who know nothing about cold fusion.
If, as you argue, it matters not whether some scientific hypothesis can be precluded, then for example Hydrino formation, or spontaneous local dark energy escape, or something else could be the cause of those anomalies.
I have no opinion about scientific hypotheses. No hypothesis or theory is needed to prove that cold fusion is real, and it is fusion.
Your judgement, as a scientist, is that they are much more likely to be cold fusion than anything else.
My judgement has nothing to do with it. The facts speak for themselves. Pd-D cold fusion converts deuterium to helium, producing heat in the same ratio to the helium as D-D plasma fusion does. It consumes no chemical fuel and produces no chemical changes. Only nuclear changes. Therefore it is fusion, by definition.
Ni-H must produce some other product. I have no idea what that might be. But it seems likely this is some sort of hydrogen fusion. That is an extrapolation, but the fact that Pd-D produces D-D fusion is an observation. An observation by itself is proof of what it shows. No theory is needed. For example, when the Curies first observed heat from radium, they saw it produced no chemical changes and it exceeded the limits of chemistry, so they knew it could not be a chemical reaction. They had no theory, but they were certain of that. They wrote:
Radium possesses the remarkable property of liberating heat spontaneously and continuously. A solid salt of radium develops a quantity of heat such that for each gram of radium contained in the salt there is an emission of one hundred calories per hour. Expressed differently, radium can melt in an hour its weight in ice. When we reflect that radium acts in this manner continuously, we are amazed at the amount of heat produced, for it can be explained by no known chemical reaction. The radium remains apparently unchanged. If, then, we assume that it undergoes a transformation, we must therefore conclude that the change is extremely slow; in an hour it is impossible to detect a change by any known methods.
- Century Magazine, 1904
