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.
There was way too much money invested in hot fusion to let even the possibility of an alternative progress.