My assessment of claim $2$ states that "The presence of a catalyst in a reaction does not function to reduce the activation energy $(Ea),$ but the reaction takes a new reaction mechanism $($steps$)$ where the total Ea is smaller."

My assessment of claim $3$ states that "The presence of a catalyst in a reaction, in this case, the presence of a solid gold $(Au)$ or platinum $(Pt)$ catalyst, causes an increase in the reaction steps. There are additional new reaction pathways to change the reactants $($reactants$)$ into reaction products $($products$)."$