That paper certainly does not confirm those old experiments - but also of course it can't refute them.
That D/Pd system undoubtedly exhibited various interesting thermal effects: high peaks in excess power generation, positive thermal feedback, heat-after-death, etc.
It is a very complex system.
Proving that those effects are outside what is possible chemically - that is what is needed to confirm those old papers. I'm not sure they can, in principle, be refuted. But I suppose a lot of work on exactly what those non-nuclear effects are, showing unexpectedly high levels of excess power etc, would incline an observer more towards thinking that the anomalies shown are non-nuclear.
Anyway - my point for orsova is that alas - as he might expect - that paper does not anywhere show or even claim that those effects are beyond what is possible chemically. The two summary paragraphs below are as far as it gets - and without stating assumptions or quantitative analysis it says "in our personal opinion, looking at data which is difficult to interpret for the reasons stated, making undisclosed reasonable assumptions, there there is some excess enthalpy generation".
And that settles nothing.
Of special interest is the excess enthalpy generation during the co-deposition, i.e. at low current densities (e.g. as low as 6 mA cm−2). Whether or not the excess heat observed in the course of co-deposition is due solely to exothermic absorption is difficult to ascertain because not much is known about the current efficiencies of the various operating reaction paths. More detailed calorimetry, beyond what was done in this experiment, would be required to assess the rate of excess enthalpy generation, if any. If, in fact, excess enthalpy is generated during the co-deposition period, it would have a profound influence on the understanding of its origin. However, making reasonable kinetic and thermodynamic assumptions together with high D/Pd atomic ratios of >1.0 within the Pd/D co-deposited films [21], one could conclude that an excess enthalpy generation cannot be excluded during the co-deposition process.
The decay of the six-point average, Q̄̄f, of Q̄f is shown in Fig. 5. In constructing this figure, it was assumed that the upper bound of any parasitic excess enthalpy generation due to the recombination is 0.009 W given by the last value of Q̄f at t=24 h, i.e. the values of Q̄f are the lower bound values. The detailed interpretation of the data requires the knowledge, at the very least, of the current efficiencies for the various reaction paths and the thermodynamics of the co-deposition process(es). However, it appears to us that if we make various plausible assumptions, then we must conclude that the Pd/D co-deposition is accompanied by excess enthalpy generation. Incidentally, some activity within the Pd/D films persisted long after termination of cell current [22].
THH