Well said. As far as I could see the whole thing was a huge scandal and black eye on the scientific community. The way Robert Park of the American Physical Society acted was particularly bad (he outright accused scientists of fraud without any evidence to back it up). Much of it probably came from competition for funding, as quite a few people got their feathers ruffled once the Dept. of Energy announced it would put funding into Cold Fusion research, thus diverting it from their own projects. Without absolving them of any responsibility for overstating their claims (which they absolutely should shoulder), it is truly a shame Pons & Fleischmann's findings could not be processed more rationally than they were at the time.