The visual match can quite easily show you that one match is stronger than another but they don’t tell you how good a match in question actually happens to be. There are ways to measure whether something is a good match with numbers.
Yes, an independent reproduction would also evaluate if their methodology is actually good in this sense (I can imagine all kinds of methodological “underwater stones”).
I did not mean to give an impression that I had made up my mind about the outcome of this potential further exploration. I had made up my mind that it’s worth further exploration, but I would not predict the results. Unfortunately, it is not all that easy to arrange (we do know that neutral prior here is important, rather than someone heavily leaning towards one side doing it, because there is always room for pushing results towards this or that direction; for example, I’ve spent too much “quality time” with this paper to be considered a fully neutral person, although I would certainly make an effort to avoid the bias if I were to do this work; then one might be unsure how safe it would be to publish on this, even today, and so on).
The idea that a country would just spend that much research capital and do that without it leaving any trace in their research publications and other public communication seems farfetched.
They would report to the government (if the order to reproduce things comes from the government). The government would decide what to make public and what to keep for more restricted use. It’s very natural (especially if the subject is potentially “dual-use”, or, at least, is considered relevant to national defense).
Yes, an independent reproduction would also evaluate if their methodology is actually good in this sense (I can imagine all kinds of methodological “underwater stones”).
I did not mean to give an impression that I had made up my mind about the outcome of this potential further exploration. I had made up my mind that it’s worth further exploration, but I would not predict the results. Unfortunately, it is not all that easy to arrange (we do know that neutral prior here is important, rather than someone heavily leaning towards one side doing it, because there is always room for pushing results towards this or that direction; for example, I’ve spent too much “quality time” with this paper to be considered a fully neutral person, although I would certainly make an effort to avoid the bias if I were to do this work; then one might be unsure how safe it would be to publish on this, even today, and so on).
They would report to the government (if the order to reproduce things comes from the government). The government would decide what to make public and what to keep for more restricted use. It’s very natural (especially if the subject is potentially “dual-use”, or, at least, is considered relevant to national defense).