They didn't. In layman terms: It is the electroysis of heavy water (D2O) on a palladium electrode.
Today's hype is all about Ni-H
If you want to see a good example of this in action, look at the folks who thought they showed neutrinos went faster than light. They constantly kept in mind that the most likely explanation for the data was experimental error, and eventually showed that their experiment had an error. Nothing was "buried", nothing was "blocked", and good science was eventually done.