In addition to the comments above, this statement in laughably ignorant on another level as well: Imagining that "Finding the hydrino" is the only "discovery" that replicating BLP's work could lead to, so why bother if it's already been found?
As we've pointed out many times before in this thread, if the hydrinos were real, they would inevitably lead to
many world-shattering discoveries, all of which have been ignored by BLP, and any one of which would be more than enough to build a career on for an up-and-coming science student. So the idea that such students wouldn't be interested because "It's already been done" is nonsense.
Others have mentioned the interest in Cold Fusion that was shown back in the day. My favorite example is contemporaneous with that: High temperature superconductors.
Ceramic based HTCs were discovered in the late 80s, and instead of everyone else going "Drat, they beat us to it!", they instead spawned a vigorous research community that is still producing new work today.
A single, ground-breaking discovery is the
start of the scientific work, not the
end of it.
If the discovery is real, of course.