From the sentence just before your quote:
But if low energy nuclear reactions are so commonplace, why haven’t scientists noticed them before? In part because they haven’t looked. LENR activity is subtle, according to Larsen, and it “can only be readily detected and measured through the use of extraordinarily sensitive mass spectroscopy techniques on stable isotopes.”
Right. My point. If your instruments are sensitive enough, they may very well be “measuring” things that aren’t really there.
I will be happy to believe in LENR when someone drives a car across the country or fuels a power plant with one.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. But I’m more than willing to be convinced if that evidence is supplied.
If you are old enough you would have seen numerous abandoned hulks just rusting away awaiting the day iron prices rose high enough to make their recovery economically feasible.
Yes, you would have seen them rusting away EVERYWHERE but the door hinges, or any other part of the body, that had been welded with an acetylene torch.
None checked out why that had happened until a young lady in the DC area won science fair after science fair demonstrating a technique for creating DIAMOND FILM with nothing more than a poorly tuned acetylene torch.
That method has since been put to work welding small diamonds together into large diamonds!
So, yes, quite ordinary processes which are quite commonly observed by great scientists and trash haulers alike can be totally ignored!
Now, how is it paint is actually mixed ~ been doing that one for thousands of years ~ what new wonders will be discovered as that process is subjected to intense scrutiny.
A common process that changes one isotope of mercury into several others is definitely something to look at!