What are the flaws? Why is the lay public not allowed to be involved? That sounds like elitist gatekeeping. The truth will come out regardless. Why can't everyone share in the excitement?

Most topics are sufficiently boring (or presented in a boring way) that it won't cause any issues.

The problem arises, when journalists publish some bad interpretation or oversimplification. That's where the review is needed.

Yeah. For everyone watching with excitement, keep in mind that the silicon semiconductor was for years worse in practice than germanium ones, even if it was theoretically better and cheaper. It took advancements in material sourcing, kilns, etc. etc.

Give this material 20 years, and we will see how it fared.

I think this might be a bit exceptional as far as public engagement goes. So I wouldn’t necessarily judge public engagement based on this case.

“Rocks float” vs “rocks not float” is a very easy success criteria for the average person to judge by, lowering the bar for the average person to feel like they can add something to the conversation… so when we add in the potential revolutionary aspects of a room temperature superconductor we have a recipe for significant engagement… it’s even engaging the gawker reflex and people are picking up on it be LK99 is a weird trending topic and people will check to see if it’s an airplane that crashed or something …

In essence it was, by sheer coincidence, bound to go viral… and only because of a number of properties that others won’t have…