I believe you may have the implication going the wrong way.
If the Copenhagen model and the pilot-wave model make the same predictions, which I believe they do since I believe they're mathematically equivalent, then you can't say one is better than the other on the basis of their predictions alone. But there are other evaluation criteria.
The pilot-wave model has a (ideally, complete) simple physical analogue that can act as an aid to intuition; the Copenhagen model, IIUC, asserts that there can be no analogue---all you have is the wave function. In which case, the pilot wave model has an advantage.
Further, if it were possible to experimentally separate the particle from the pilot-wave, the two models would not be equivalent. But you would never look for that kind of experimental evidence if you are only using the Copenhagen model.
On the other hand, from the article:
"Quantum physicists tend to consider the findings less significant. After all, the fluid research does not provide direct evidence that pilot waves propel particles at the quantum scale. And a surprising analogy between electrons and oil droplets does not yield new and better calculations. “Personally, I think it has little to do with quantum mechanics,” said Gerard ’t Hooft, a Nobel Prize-winning particle physicist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. He believes quantum theory is incomplete but dislikes pilot-wave theory."
It appears tHooft's theory has determinism in common with Bohmian theory, but differs in that it proposes hidden local variables as not violating Bell's inequalities, rather than a wave equation which has non-local dependencies?
If the Copenhagen model and the pilot-wave model make the same predictions, which I believe they do since I believe they're mathematically equivalent, then you can't say one is better than the other on the basis of their predictions alone. But there are other evaluation criteria.
The pilot-wave model has a (ideally, complete) simple physical analogue that can act as an aid to intuition; the Copenhagen model, IIUC, asserts that there can be no analogue---all you have is the wave function. In which case, the pilot wave model has an advantage.
Further, if it were possible to experimentally separate the particle from the pilot-wave, the two models would not be equivalent. But you would never look for that kind of experimental evidence if you are only using the Copenhagen model.
On the other hand, from the article:
"Quantum physicists tend to consider the findings less significant. After all, the fluid research does not provide direct evidence that pilot waves propel particles at the quantum scale. And a surprising analogy between electrons and oil droplets does not yield new and better calculations. “Personally, I think it has little to do with quantum mechanics,” said Gerard ’t Hooft, a Nobel Prize-winning particle physicist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. He believes quantum theory is incomplete but dislikes pilot-wave theory."
I'm thinking he is saying the same thing you are.