  Recent measurements of the reaction d(d,p)t in metallic environments at very
low energies performed by different experimental groups point to an enhanced
electron screening effect. However, the resulting screening energies differ
strongly for divers host metals and different experiments. Here, we present new
experimental results and investigations of interfering processes in the
irradiated targets. These measurements inside metals set special challenges and
pitfalls which make them and the data analysis particularly error-prone. There
are multi-parameter collateral effects which are crucial for the correct
interpretation of the observed experimental yields. They mainly originate from
target surface contaminations due to residual gases in the vacuum as well as
from inhomogeneities and instabilities in the deuteron density distribution in
the targets. In order to address these problems an improved differential
analysis method beyond the standard procedures has been implemented. Profound
scrutiny of the other experiments demonstrates that the observed unusual
changes in the reaction yields are mainly due to deuteron density dynamics
simulating the alleged screening energy values. The experimental results are
compared with different theoretical models of the electron screening in metals.
The Debye-H\"{u}ckel model that has been previously proposed to explain the
influence of the electron screening on both nuclear reactions and radioactive
decays could be clearly excluded.
