Yeah I would agree it’s contentious. I think there was a tonne of market speculation in China, so the government there was keen to pour cold water on it quickly, which they have.

I would say it’s very unlikely that LK-99 wins any prizes. I also think the theories put forward by the original authors wont go anywhere, but some of the response papers that churned up a lot of new hypotheses are pretty valuable so there’s actually is a chunk of new stuff to investigate.

Stepping back the timeline suggests something can pop out at any time, which is why it’s worth monitoring the SC space and it might actually be prudent to act like room temp superconductors already exist. I expect to see it in my lifetime.