Reading a brief quote given to a journalist and assuming you fully understand the scientific reasoning that went into that snippet intended for lay audiences is also a remarkable assumption. There is an incredible amount of context missing from the article, the quote, and of course discussion in this thread. But my main issue is that you jump from phrasing in the quote, 'supports the model,' to 'must be' which is an underhanded way to make the researcher seem ridiculous.
"We can't come up with anything better, and have ruled out everything we reasonably can at this point in our inquiry, so therefore the findings support the only remaining plausible mechanism" is literally how science works a lot of the time. It's why the researcher specifically said 'supports the model' not 'must be quantum consciousness,' because this researcher knows and is implicitly acknolwedging there is a whole lot more work to be done.
"We can't come up with anything better, and have ruled out everything we reasonably can at this point in our inquiry, so therefore the findings support the only remaining plausible mechanism" is literally how science works a lot of the time. It's why the researcher specifically said 'supports the model' not 'must be quantum consciousness,' because this researcher knows and is implicitly acknolwedging there is a whole lot more work to be done.