I know that. But whether the conclusion is based on faith in the viability of the process or the desire to channel federal funding to ARPA associated researchers is an open question. I always have hope that you and Kevmo will be proven to be correct.
What you have to keep in mind is that physicists have (and have had) control of the levers of funding at the Federal level ever since development of the atomic bomb. So this decision by ARPA-E has had to overcome that bureaucratic hurdle in addition to "checking the viability" of the actual research.
I did some research contracting with LLNL on a bio-warfare experiment, and was exposed to the internal politics of "big research" in the FedGov, enough to understand the situation... physicists don't like competition for money.
And that has been what has stalled the effort from Pons and Fleischmann's initial revelation even unto today. The science was never a problem...it was politics.