The other thing is that even if LK-99 is finally conclusively shown to be a room temp & ambient pressure SC, there will be lots of important challenges to work

The other thing is that even if LK-99 is finally conclusively shown to be a room temp & ambient pressure SC, there will be lots of important challenges to work on surrounding LK-99, so not being the first to replicate is no tragedy: - challenges in practical and reliable manufacturing of LK-99 - challenges in engineering w/ LK-99 - challenges in finding better materials than LK-99 using similar approaches If I were in a position where I could devote funding and researcher and lab time into LK-99 research, I might well quietly let others to do the replication work while having my team quietly research practical manufacturing of LK-99 so that we could a) beat everyone else to the punch on practical and reliable manufacturing, b) get the patents for (a).