So the authors are disciples of a professor specialized in superconductor, their own Master and PhD were about superconductor, then they created a lab/company specifically for researching superconductor. This is contrary to my earlier belief that they were just normal chemists/physicists that happened to stumble upon an interesting material.
Unless they're lying through their teeth, it's hard to believe they would not recognize an actual SC when they see one.
Lee was stuck as an adjunct professor for 19 years. Kim thinks that physicists all have their head up their ass and he knows the shortcut to discovering superconductivity. And nature wouldn't publish their paper.
Combined with their inability to accurately measure Tc and a lot of skepticism already out there that their graphs show what they say they do this looks like poor science.
Which is not to accuse them of lying. It looks like they're just not very good, but think they're geniuses.
That graphic isn't saying there's a shortcut, it's basically saying that physicists need to work harder and try many many many many more materials than they do. Not quite trial and error since the classes of materials should be informed by some theory, but far more - multiple thousands per individual.
He states it took 1000 attempts with two steps in the process requiring a "stroke of luck". This doesn't sound like it's going to be easy to replicate or verify.
The fourth step, chromatography, ensures that every height on the test film is a consistent compound, from then on you'd figure out which compound that it is, and reproduce it separately and retest it, which is what they claim to have done.
Unless they're lying through their teeth, it's hard to believe they would not recognize an actual SC when they see one.