In this case at least it isn't that hard. Opus is available to pretty much everyone, and anyone of sufficient means (I'm guessing at least 95% of active HN) can also easily afford the hardware.

And obviously this isn't something that's being iterated on rapid-fire; there have been 2 relevant publications roughly a year apart. Absolutely no firehose of anything here. As such there should be no problem for someone with enough interest to attempt to disprove the claims, and hopefully share the results regardless of their findings.