No idea if accurate but there was this which is interesting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36996337

> “ Specifically they were one of the last believers of long-forgotten Russian theory of superconductivity, pioneered by Nikolay Bogolyubov. The accepted theory is entirely based on Cooper pairs, but this theory suggests that a sufficient constraint on electrons may allow superconductivity without actual Cooper pairs. This requires carefully positioned point defects in the crystalline structure, which contemporary scientists consider unlikely and such mode of SC was never formally categorized unlike type-I and type-II SC. Professor Tong-seek Chair (최동식) represented a regret about this status quo (in 90s, but still applies today) that this theory was largely forgotten without the proper assessment after the fall of USSR. It was also a very interesting twist that Iris Alexandria, "that Russian catgirl chemist", had an advisor who was a physicist-cum-biochemist studied this theory and as a result were so familiar with the theory that they were able to tell if replications follow the theoretical prediction.”

So it might be an old hypothesis brought back?

A very large quantity of discoveries in science are a combination of "well, that's odd" and the "sheer luck" associated with the circumstances producing that statement.

(This isn't a commentary on the truthfulness of the superconductor claims.)

Yes, but that doesn't answer the question ...

Yes it does, the answer is both, but with the caveat that there were people focused on rolling the dice of luck to search for this.

There is a combinatorial number of different materials out there. They chose a particular small subset of them that they predicted might have some interesting properties and, over two decades, discovered one that may have those properties.

Most hypotheses are wrong, and even if they turn out right it may well be a case of being right for the wrong reasons. Regardless, this is top tier research: unglamorous, uninstagramable drudgery guided by intellect. Sure, there's luck involved, but research always involves luck.

This is a very odd question to me. All research is essentially this may or may not work. That's why you test it. In a sense finding something cool is a very large part luck.

Does it matter? Even "rigorous" research depends on luck in many cases, because there are so many unknowns. Theory helps reduce the search space, but there are situations when a brute-force attack is the most efficient way to answer the all-important question: is this real?

Many things were discovered out of luck in the course of research.

Trying lots of stuff for years and years until something works, aka rigorous research and sheer luck.

Guided brute force search.

Those two options are not mutually exclusive