We have a system for evaluating his work, it's called peer review. And he is bypassing it.

Airplane pilots still use magnetic headings to identify runways which is gazillion times simpler than using GPS (doesn't even require power). Runways are numbered according to their orientation relative to the horizontal magnetic field (their declination). The wandering of the North pole is however inconvenient as these runway numbers must be changed accordingly every now and then.

This. Traffic conditions have to be the same in order to compare increased cell phone usage with crash rates. Considerable more driver attention is required when traffic is heavy!

You just described string theory!

TFA doesn't refute any of Einsteins conclusions about Brownian motion. It only shows that it was something impossible to do at Einsteins time. What a cheap way to grab attention!

Some fields in physics such as granular/fluid dynamics are poorly understood and there is not a lot of experimental data. Experiments can be relatively simple if the researcher is imaginative (ingredients: water, fluorescent dye, blue leds, video camera). These fields would certainly benefit from home research if done properly. You would spent some money but definitely not thousands to have a simple setup. There is also psychoacoustics. For example, I'm developing a way to calculate Head Related Transfer Functions (HRTF's) using minimal equipment (an audio card, computer and tiny microphones). It is exciting and the learning experience is great even if the whole thing turns out to be too complex/costly to pursue. I think this latter point is what makes home research worthwhile. Also bear in mind that there's a lot of money spent on research in big institutions that doesn't lead to anything fruitful. It may also happen in your home lab but then you wouldn't be worried of not finding a good postdoc position, losing tenure or not getting a grant!

I think the question is the origin of the gases, not the mechanism that keeps them trapped.

It barely matters, as the tiny black holes engulf the detector, her, and us all!

It is a basic assumption in science that given some set of conditions (or causes) you get the same effect. For this to happen it is important to properly record how to setup the conditions. This is the kind of things that scientific papers describe (in principle at least!).