> If all you can offer is your "personal assurance" then that seems to exactly confirms the author's point.
In my post, I literally said: "I would like to know what the article's author would take as proof of this."
What, honestly, would it take? I have been thinking about what evidence I personally would want if I were in your position of incredulity. It's different when you sit next to the things and see the people passionately building them and keeping them working day in and day out, I suppose; I can see with my own eyes that there is no fraud taking place, but I can't exactly bring everyone in the world in for a lab tour.