The EMDrive is a better example, I think. The OPERA people knew from the start that they likely had an "uncontrolled systematic" and their measurement was likely to be wrong, so very few people got excited. The EMDrive got a lot of people excited over a minor error in a very difficult measurement. In both cases the general "science" public picked up on it, inappropriately, but in only one of the two cases were the flames fanned by the research team. (Compare also the Pioneer anomaly [0].)

I do suspect this is just another EMDrive. Interacting with the vacuum to shift energy around is well-known (again, see Hawking radiation [1]), but holding on to it overall for long enough to violate the uncertainty principle (the one for the E-t commutator [2]) doesn't work. And I don't think you can hold it just long enough to reverse entropy... though that doesn't sound prima facie impossible. Making a measurement incorrectly, though... I do that every day I'm in the lab.

Addition: Also, the MDPI journals are kinda-sorta just one step up from trash-tier, at least in my mind, so I don't pay much attention to work that can only manage to get in to one of them.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_anomaly

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle ...at least I think it's in there somewhere. Otherwise grab Griffiths!