The paper itself[0] is a little (hah!) over my head, but this[1] tickled me:
> I’ve heard more than one person say that what a pity that Penrose fell for this crazy Hameroff person. But, well, I’ve met both Penrose and Hameroff and they’re both crazy of course, but neither of them is stupid.
The important thing in that paper is not "quantum", but the claim that internal data transmission by light within neural systems is a thing. The paper cites this result on ultra-weak light emissions from neurons.[1] The paper is behind Elsevier's paywall.
So the paper then takes data transmission by light as a given, and goes on to hypothesize structures that direct light as fiber optics do, and from there goes on to "ultrafast" data transmission.
Comments from biochemistry people would help here. It's not at all clear what's an actual result and what's hand-waving. However, it is clear that this is an area where experimentation is possible. Further work should move this out of the range of speculation and either confirm or dismiss it.
> I’ve heard more than one person say that what a pity that Penrose fell for this crazy Hameroff person. But, well, I’ve met both Penrose and Hameroff and they’re both crazy of course, but neither of them is stupid.
0: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jpcb.3c07936
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6G1D2UQ3gg&t=181s