I agree to an extent. The criticism was more like, "that seems physically impossible," like many of us might react if a story claiming someone had invented warp drive got to the top of HN.

However, most of the knowledge about such things is "siloed" inside the lab science community itself, without much awareness from the outside.

That being said, I think so few Valley VCs got duped because they actually did the due diligence and determined this was in the "not physically possible" realm.