It's also odd that the patients had to pay for the experimental surgery. This doesn't sound like a serious clinical trial, it sounds like a hack performed by some back-alley doc in a dystopic science fiction story...
It's not a dystopic science fiction story, it's how slow and cumbersome and real world engineering based medical research works, and how the only way to make any meaningful progress fast enough (if you're not in one of the few well funded and well staffed places in the world, working on one of the few projects that are considered "important"), is to work around the system, cheat and look for sloppy shortcuts, ask the poor patients for money directly, and how everything crumbles when the one genius/madman that pulled all those tricks to make it work goes out of the picture.
I mean, they did manage to give him back his sight for a limited period of time, that's pretty amazing technology if you ask me, not the kind a hack would achieve, but yes, it's very unfortunate that he lost it again, that must be some terrible pain.
I agree it might not sound too professional, but it seems to me that it's more about how this article is putting it and the reality may be more complex.