When their initial report came out I was working as an engineer along with many dozens of others. I can assure you that their claims were evaluated consistent with their good reputations.
The problem is and always has been the inability to reproduce their results. I see that Andrea Rossi still claims, after all these years, to have products to sell based on similar "technology". I am not aware of anybody getting benefit from such products.
The burden of proof in scientific matters does not shift to the general public simply based on unreproducible claims. It remains with those who make the claims.
You are simply uninformed.
The P&F efffect has been replicated hundreds if not thousands of times.
The co-deposition approach has been replicated more than 200 times.
I made money by betting that Yoshiaki Arata’s pycnodeuterium approach would be replicated in a peer reviewed journal.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2435697/posts
Replicated >153 times by the Who’s Who of electrochemistry, >180 labs, >14,700 experiments.