Isn't the purpose of the paper to document just that? Not explain the device itself, but rather that the claim that the thing outputs power? If you're going to

Isn't the purpose of the paper to document just that? Not explain the device itself, but rather that the claim that the thing outputs power? If you're going to complain about it, fuss over the setup or errors, not the tedious details that document the experiment (and provide a way for others to cross-check their practice and results later). Certainly there's the possibility for burying the truth in mounds of irrelevant data, but if your experiment hinges on showing that a resistor's load is larger than expected, I would expect to see some heavy details on how that was monitored.