Something I've also been thinking about is that we don't appear to have any data on the success rate. Maybe the samples of LK99 are the best that the team has been able to produce, but the process requires further refinement and experimentation.
1000 / 24y ~= 41/y, which after vacation and other things is probably closer to 1/wk. If all their experiments involve easy-to-synthesize substances (where easy == no more than 3 or 4 days) then it's not that intense, no. But you really have to be quite confident that this approach will pay off to put 2+ decades into it.
I suspect if they really did 1,000 experiments then they often did 2/wk because I don't think they ran all of them continuously over 20+yrs.
Speaking of which, can we see their notes on the other 999 experiments that didn't work out? That would be very useful, especially if LK-99 turns out not to be awesome but is good enough to hint that this approach is worthy of more research -- there's 999 compounds not worth testing, right? (Well, maybe maybe. If the physics of LK-99 come to be understood, then maybe some of the other 999 experiments might need to be re-examined.)
They didn't have a theory to drive them to doggedly pursue this system as an SC. Was it just the blip 20 years ago? Why wouldn't you wonder if your machine was shitty?
If I was them, its decades past believing this might be an empty rabbit hole. You're committed. If it's real, it's heroic. If not? It's a failure of rationality. But it's both simultaneously.
If they're right, I'm sure every notebook will be published. If not? We'll never see their fury or process.
