@amsomniac@witches.town I suspect that what happened is that someone was overenthusiastic about putting things in wikipedia.
I don't know the science behind this paper specifically, but I've written my share of paper that have phrases like "and in principle, this could be used to cure intractable diseases" and "in principle, this could allow better materials against biofouling" and stuff like that. It's a long-term justification for why this research is interesting, not an engineering spec.
@amsomniac@witches.town The paper only came out last year and has now been cited a few times, which is pretty reasonable, it takes a while for other people to spin up new research efforts that use the latest stuff that comes out. There's a long, long road from "here's a new physical phenomenon that, in principle, could be useful" to something that is actually practical. .
