I fear I did not read the entire article before posting ... again.
I read it and also saw “He and other team members were Initially skeptical but grew more excited by da Vinci’s design after some computer simulations and 3D-printed screw prototypes showed promising trends.”
That is good engineering — come up with a new idea, be skeptical of it, and grow more convinced of it as you do more analyses.
I still stand by he was just exuberant and really didn’t mean “we were surprised it worked.”