Having worked in a solid state lab that focused on synthesis and imaging characterization of various substrates including superconductors, being an engineer does not make you not an amateur.
Please read my comment again. I am not saying engineers (of the sort attempting replication) are more than amateurs when it comes to superconductors, I am saying they are not amateurs around relatively mundane equipment.
> who is trying to reproduce this without any understanding of how to operate the equipment or some understandings around basic chemistry and physics?
The engineers replicating it are at places that already had this equipment. They weren't using it to try and make floating rocks, but they didn't have the furnaces, etc., sitting around for the hell of it, and they're going to be aware of basic precautions like "Don't eat your lead and don't breathe it in in vaporized form when pulling it out of a 1000C furnace."
I do not understand the idea that people already using this equipment day to day for other purposes are somehow at significant risk while attempting to synthesize LK-99
