The so-called "replication crisis" is overblown.
If LK-99 fails to be a useful material, it's interesting life will be over very shortly. If it is useful (and even if it's not the promised room-temperature superconductor, but useful in some other aspect), it will continue on in science, in technology - everywhere it might be useful for further investigation.
the authors managed to squeeze 24 years of grant funding out of it
The entire premise of your retort was wrong. You should have challenged them to take their certainty to the prediction markets.