This is about material that didn't exist before.

The existence and effect of it should suffice.

How it is produced is a later step.

Well, in the case of LK-99 the production method itself seems to be part of the puzzle, and the original authors aren't noticeably better at it than anyone else. Even their best sample doesn't fully levitate.

We need higher quality samples in order to determine whether the thing actually superconducts, because it's really hard to measure the resistance of small grains of material buried inside a mostly useless rock.

Based on your statement, the original author would have claimed something untrue since they also cannot really produce LK-99 that fully levitates.

It is certainly not a part of the puzzle here.

The puzzle is to reproduce the experiment, but you claim the original experiment itself is bogus...

What do you think is easier, making a possible superconductor, or popping it on top of a magnet and seeing if it floats? The latter is an "experiment" only in the sense of an elementary school science class.

Why are we so obsessed with finding out whether the original authors did their homework? Science is not about crediting or discrediting people, it's about collaborating and standing on one another's shoulders to find out truths about the world. If LK-99 turns out to be a superconductor, it doesn't matter if the original paper was glaringly incomplete. If LK-99 doesn't pan out, it matters even less.

An outside lab reproducing the alleged superconducting properties of a given sample of LK-99 would be a good reproduction.