Science has a protocol. Conservatism has a protocol.
Apparently there is a protocol that overrides both of them, the protocol of the gang @$$#0/e.
What you call protocol Nobel Laureate Irving Langmuir called pathological science.
“Langmuir coined the term more than 50 years ago to describe a psychological process in which scientists unconsciously veer away from the scientific method and become so engrossed in what they are doing they develop an inability to be objective and see what is real and not real. Pathological science is “the science of things that aren't so,” Langmuir said. In some cases, it is embodied in areas of research like cold fusion/LENR that simply will not go away, even when given up on as false by a majority of scientists.”
“I hope they're right,” Wilk says about Mills and BLP. “I really do. I'm not out to debunk them, just to get at the truth.” For the sake of the argument—“if pigs could fly,” as Wilk puts it, he says he'll accept their data, their theory, and other predictions that can be derived from them. But he has never been a true believer. “I think if hydrinos existed, they would have been detected by others in laboratories or in nature years ago and would be used by now.”
Quote from near the end of the following link:
https://cen.acs.org/articles/94/i44/Cold-fusion-died-25-years.html
And I do apologize that any attempt made to introduce factual matters into this "discussion" causes such distress.