...which was never peer-reviewed or reproduced. The authors of the patent are also not physicists, chemists, or materials-scientists, with no prior publications related to superconductors. This just came out of thin air.

If anything, this highlights everything that's wrong with the US patent system. (you don't need to have a working prototype to get it patented, and the patent examiner doesn't need to understand anything about the mechanism you're proposing.)