No,

Lee and Kim first discovered the material in 1999 and have spent 20 years doing other things in between getting help to figure out how to isolate LK-99 and reproduce the correct grain structure.

They eventually got a world class physical chemist, Kwon.

There is now a huge bust up within the team, hence the muddled race to publish and claim credit.

Ahh that makes sense. I was wondering what was going on with the two papers and thought it might be something like that too. Thanks for the extra details.