Fake news in physics
A recent New York Times article is an example of fake news. In fact, even the underlying Nature article is guilty of the same fake-news quality of writing.

NYT Title: An Experiment in Zurich Brings Us Nearer to a Black Hole’s Mysteries

Translation: Physicists did something that should make you excited even though you don't know what it is.

The article proceeds to explain that:

The motion of electrons inside a ribbon of a semimetal is governed by essentially the same space-time-warping equations as the original mixed axial-gravitational anomaly.

The axial-gravitational anomaly is a consequence of quantum field theory in curved space (which is a theory not yet confirmed by any experiments) and/or of string theory (ditto); however, the effect is too weak to ever be registered experimentally, according to the authors of the original article:

“We would never be able to detect this,” said Karl Landsteiner, one of the authors of the Nature paper and a physicist at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Spain.

Then we learn that scientists measured some properties of the semimetal and found experimental confirmation of the equations that were supposed to describe it. This is certainly progress for solid-state physics, but why is this relevant to understanding black holes? Can we use an experimental result in solid state physics as a substitute for an experimental result in quantum gravity? 

Clearly, we cannot.

Certain equations give solutions that accurately describe the properties of the semimetal; let's assume this is correct. The same equations describe the axial-gravitational anomaly. Now, there can be 3 cases: 

1)  we don't know how to solve these equations,
2) we can solve these equations in a mathematically correct way,
3) we sort of solve them half-rigorously but there are some gray areas in the calculations (as it sometimes happens in physics nowadays).

Case 1: If we don't know how to solve these equations, we could not claim that any theory has been verified by experiment in any sense. So this possibility can be excluded.

Case 2: If we do know the solutions, we haven't learned anything new about black holes or quantum gravity - we still need an experiment to check whether these solutions agree with experimental observations for gravity. An experiment in pure solid state physics is completely irrelevant to the question of whether some equations correctly describe quantum gravity.

In Case 3, all we have verified is that maybe the calculations give the right results after all, even though we don't know how to perform them fully rigorously. It's unlikely that the experimental results accidentally agree in detail with the results of a very complicated calculation, even though the calculation is not rigorous.

It is not really possible to conclude logically that a half-rigorous calculation is itself a correct calculation if we found an experiment that agrees with it. However, most physicists today would agree with that, for lack of better options. It's better to have a half-rigorous calculation whose results are experimentally verified, than to have no calculation at all.

It is, however, completely unjustified to conclude that the same half-rigorous calculation will also agree with a completely different experiment (in quantum gravity) and thus provides a better understanding of gravity. To conclude this is pure wishful thinking with no basis.

And yet this is what Dr. Landsteiner seems to be saying:

The semimetal results could, in turn, improve understanding of black holes, Dr. Landsteiner said.
<...>
Here, Dr. Landsteiner said, some of the techniques that originated in string theory turned out to be useful for something different: to calculate the expected anomaly. “It puts string theory onto a firm basis as a tool for doing physics, real physics,” he said. “It seems incredible even to me that all this works, falls all together and can be converted into something so down to earth as an electric current.”

There wouldn't be any talk about "putting string theory onto a firm basis" if string theory were "on a firm basis" to begin with. What does it mean here to be "on a firm basis"? It means to be an ordinary physical theory where you solve some equations and check against experimental data. String theory can't rigorously solve its equations and doesn't check against experimental data either. So, it seems we are in Case 3.

Dr. Landsteiner's logic goes like this:

String theory claims that equation X works for quantum gravity. We have no experiments in quantum gravity, and we cannot solve equation X rigorously. So the first question is whether our solution for equation X is even correct (if we had a rigorous calculation, this won't be a question, but we don't have that). Now, a solid-state experiment agrees with our half-rigorous solutions of equation X. This gives us hope that we have a good way of solving that equation. It is "incredible" that our half-rigorous calculations are even relevant to anything in the real world, such as an electric current. So, now we can continue with our half-rigorous calculations with new hopes in hand.

New hopes - yes. New understanding of quantum gravity or black holes - no.