It's really not as simple as "just replicate it".
This being a potential trillion dollar business I wouldn't worry about expediency in pursuit of it's veracity
Again, replication is crucial. It's a Good Thing. It's just not a trivial thing that we can expect to "just happen".
And no, it's not that replication becomes a guessing exercise, but it's the fact that the time spent setting up, debugging and then running a replication of even a perfectly described benchtop-style experiment costs much much more than the actual equipment involved. And the ROI is poor, since replication studies are hard to publish.
But there can be critical details needed to replicate which the experimenter didn't realize were important and didn't think to record. And possibly didn't notice.
One of the reasons why replication matters is that it is a way of discovering these factors which matter but weren't obvious.
... and that would be because the patent hasn't been issued yet.
wouldn't hooking it up to a charge controller, weighing it, then watching how long a lightbulb stays on suffice?
Even if it's a complete black-box, and the thing never gets cracked open, if i understand correctly, the claimed energy density has not been achieved?
Moreover, replication by the same team isn't what's usually understood by "replication". A large part of the point is that others confirm a scientist's findings.
Supposing it was not a hoax, it becomes a curiosity how it works, and hopefully lead to awesome discoveries, but being able to produce a thing which is great and we don't understand fully is fine by me.