> Not every student who graduates will become a world-renowned researcher.

Nobody claims the opposite. But that doesn't imply that PhD grads who don't become top researchers have just spent 3-6 years of their life writing non-sensical papers. Many PhD students drop out if they reach a dead-end, even though they were perfectly qualified otherwise. If you can't produce research that gets cited, you're a net negative to the lab and its staff, any supervisor that has skin in the game won't just let you go on for years.

> a researcher who is so far above the rest of the world

Except it's not just one professor but literally everyone who tried to engage with them in a reasonable discussion. Hell, I was an undergrad student at the time, and one of my calculus TAs was part of these people trying to make sense of their claims (there was no shortage of online forums where the brothers would try to defend themselves). Not a world-class researcher or even someone who made an academic career, just a competent PhD student in quantum groups.

The CNRS has written a 30+ page report that explains why their work is completely devoid of anything of scientific value, and for the few parts that make sense, not even at the standards of an MSc thesis. Do you think the typical CNRS researchers have enough spare time to read two PhD theses, multiple papers and write a comprehensive report, for fun?

And that's not even the worst part. If they had been acting in good faith, they wouldn't have sued several newspapers and regularly misquoted/mistranslated renowned physicists.

They were fraudsters, and just paid the ultimate price of their lack of scientific integrity.