And: "White and Tajmar have impeccable credentials that put them beyond cheap dismissal and scorn. Physics is an experimental science, and the fact that the EM Drive works is confirmed in the lab. "This is the first time that someone with a well-equipped lab and a strong background in tracking experimental error has been involved, rather than engineers who may be unconsciously influenced by a desire to see it work," notes Wired referring to Tajmar's work."
Also: "The NASASpaceFlight website and forums have emerged as unofficial news source and discussion space for all things related to the EM Drive and related breakthrough space propulsion proposals such as the Cannae Drive." Which would be a response for your argument that "The reality is that if the experimental effect was large enough for them to get a peer-reviewed result into publication, theorists all over the world would be shoving each other out of the way to explain the effect, rather than the other way around: a handful of dubious "theories" without any serious experimental evidence for them to explain."
For it's my understanding that the "reality" is that the ONLY thing scientists "shove each other out of the way for" is GRANTS. In this day and age it is beyond naive to believe that researchers pursue the dreams of pure science. Rather to exist at all they have to be extremely hard-nosed about what the "popular subjects" are for peer-reviewed publications, because those are the subjects for which they can get grants.
That's WHY ""The NASASpaceFlight website and forums have emerged as unofficial news source and discussion space for all things related to the EM Drive and related breakthrough space propulsion proposals ." And in the alternative, your speculation - and that's all it is - that "the experimental results are not sufficiently distinct from noise," is countered by the very subject of this article - the "new experimental results on the controversial, "impossible" EM Drive, at the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics' Propulsion and Energy Forum in Orlando... titled "Direct Thrust Measurements of an EmDrive and Evaluation of Possible Side-Effects." And as presenter Martin Tajmar is a professor and chair for Space Systems at the Dresden University of Technology, interested in space propulsion systems and breakthrough propulsion physics," I think he probably wouldn't want to present a paper demonstrating his inability to parse background noise from experimental date - quite the opposite, in fact.
So given all of that, if his "peers" don't want to address his findings, it's not his fault - nor is belligerence by the supporters of the entrenched paradigm a new attitude to deal with in science.
I really enjoy chatting with Homer Hickam on twitter. He encourages wide ranging thought and says there is no such thing as a dumb idea.
If someone suggests throwing rocks at a rocket to propel it forward, he starts thinking about the math. As he says, its not really feasible but not a dumb idea and works quite well if you think of your ship having a solar said and the rocks as photons from the sun.
For all of his work on rockets he says he always knew that chemical rockets were never going to get manned missions much further than Mars at the very most.
The fervency of your desire to believe in a thing does not influence in the slightest whether it is indeed real.
Notice that in your entire TL;DR reposting of the article, they say, "results will be presented," but do not say "the results are soon to be published in..." The reason they aren't saying that is that there are no experimental results yet of a quality decent enough that anyone will even try to publish them.
As for the rest of your rant, frankly, it's nonsense. As a former condensed matter theorist let me disabuse you of at least two idiotic ideas you have: 1) there are no "entrenched paradigms" in theoretical physics. If there really is something here, a theorist would love to be the first person in the world to explain it. And as soon as there is a reproducible signal significantly higher than the noise there will no shortage of theorists clamoring to to do just that. 2) Theoreticians aren't shoving each other out of the way for grant money. There's probably no lower overhead advanced technology practice in the world than theoretical physics. The extent of my professional expenses in 1984 was a salary barely higher than a graduate student's and the cost of paper, pencils, and dry erase markers for my white boards.
It is simply a LIE concocted by anti-scientific ignoramuses and snake oil salesman that cold-fusion, reactionless drives, perpetual motion machines of the first and second kinds, warp engines, and you name whatever kookburger nonsense next makes its way down the pike don't make it because they're opposed by some priestly class of keepers of the sacred entrenched paradigm.
Finally, NASA isn't outside of the scientific mainstream, and they certainly aren't outside of the government cash stream. As soon as NASA actually believes they have a publishable result, they will have NO DIFFICULTY whatsoever in getting it printed in the most prestigious journals in the world. None.
They haven't tried to do that because they aren't willing to stake their reputations on something tantalizing but unproven.