The primary issue that the LENR theorist faces is to judge "how much is enough" or "how far do we need to zoom in".
The reason why there are so many cold fusion theories is that most theorists have not approached the essence of the LENR issue. To illustrate the situation that LENR faces as a huge and vastly complicated issue is similar to the King who wanted to know the true essence of a problem. To teach his advisors a lesson on how best to arrive at truth, he asked his advisors to determine what an elephant looked like by feeling different parts of the elephant's body. The men were led into a darken room where an elephant quietly stood. The man who feels its leg says the elephant is like a pillar; the one who feels the tail says the elephant is like a rope; the one who feels the trunk says the elephant is like a tree branch; the one who feels the ear says the elephant is like a hand fan; the one who feels the belly says the elephant is like a wall; and the one who feels the tusk says the elephant is like a solid pipe. The king explains to them: All of you are right. The reason every one of you is telling it differently is because each one of you have touched the different part of the elephant. So, actually the elephant has all the features you mentioned. To know the true essence of the elephant, you must put all these characteristics together into a coherent whole. Like a huge elephant standing quietly in a darkened room, the reason why there are so many theories of LENR is because each theory limits itself to just one particular manifestation of the LENR phenomena. We must not confuse effect with cause. We must keep our hands moving and groping and feeling the huge dark animal that stands before us. We must keep on zooming in to find the true essence of what LENR is all about and not restrict ourselves to just one part of a vastly more complicated whole.
