This experiments has some similarities with cold fusion [1] experiments, for example those of Fleischmann and Pons, as they involve metals and hydrogen. But I am not sure that hitting stuff with photons in the megaelectron volt range would or should still count as low energy in the context of cold fusion, so one could probably consider the similarities rather superficial.
The Wikipedia article actually mentions that one proposed mechanism for cold fusion is the confinement of hydrogen inside of matter but also that this alone is not good enough to produce the claimed fusion rates. So in some sense some of the cold fusion people were on the right track, they just missed hitting the experiment with energetic photons.
Now it seems pretty obvious, get the hydrogen close together inside a metal, then hit it hard to overcome the remaining gap. But I guess the cold fusion community really wanted really low energies and so this was not considered. Or maybe it was and they just missed another detail or could not build or run the experiment, I really have no good idea what the could fusion - or low energy nuclear reaction after that name was burned - community considered and tried.
I don't think anyone suppressed cold fusion. The original results couldn't be replicated. There were some anomalous results, but no results that lined up with the original claims that were made.
If scientist makes claim X and no one can replicate the experiment and most scientists conclude that claim X resulted from experimental error. That is not suppression.
If scientist makes claim that X sometimes happens... and then researcher Y repeats the experiment, and it happens a few times, but not always.... or not at the same frequency... far to many people say the replication has failed... instead of digging further.
There were many such incidents where the stated effect happened only a few % of the time.... but not zero. But, it wasn't 100%...so it got ignored, or rejected.
The original results were replicated.... they couldn't reliably, or easily be replicated...turns out cramming deuterium into a palladium lattice isn't an easy peasy way to get fusion without a lot of experimentation.
There was way too much money invested in hot fusion to let even the possibility of an alternative progress.
Tens of millions of dollars were invested in trying to replicate the cold fusion experiments with zero success. That, combined with Fleischmann and Pons' general incompetence, makes it pretty obvious that the initial report was a fluke.
There was plenty of replication, it just wasn't published in the "peer reviewed" journals that are supposed to help advance science, but work against it these days.
