They are still roundly criticized.
"Hameroff’s ideas in the hands of Penrose have developed almost to absurdity. There is no justification to the incorporation in the Orch OR theory of consciousness the Diósi–Penrose scheme for objective reduction of the quantum state 34. The tentative role of gravity in quantum state reduction (the so-called wavefunction collapse), by means of the Schrödinger–Newton equation, only introduces noise in the presentation of the Orch OR theory and distracts from its most important points. I will not discuss here the ideas of Diósi–Penrose explaining quantum measurements by means of the instability of quantum superpositions involving significant mass displacements.
The prevalent scientific view is that consciousness emerged as a property of biological organisms during the course of evolution. It is a beneficial adaptation that confers a survival advantage to conscious species. However, Orch OR theory claims that consciousness is an intrinsic feature of the action of the non-computable universe. Because humans are capable of knowing the truth of Gödel-unprovable statements, the Penrose–Lucas argument states that human thought is necessarily non-computable 5. However, the computational power of a quantum computer is exactly the same as a classical one, as proved in 1985 by Oxford University physicist David Deutsch. Quantum Turing machines are equivalent to (Classical) Turing machines, even if certain NP problems can be made efficient using quantum algorithms. In my opinion, to recur to the ‘magic’ of non-computability is not the best route to a scientific solution of the problem of consciousness.
Microtubules are part of the cytoskeleton of all eukaryotic cells, however consciousness is the result of neurons in the cerebral cortex. Microtubules are cylindrical polymers of 25 nanometers in diameter made of tubulin dimers, composed of alpha and beta monomers in a helical pathway. In 1982, Hameroff and Watt 6 suggested that tubulin dimers act as dipoles representing information (classical) bits of information. Microtubules act like two-dimensional Boolean switching matrices in a cellular automata. Early versions of Orch OR theory proposed a quantum version of these ideas: tubulin dimers acting as qubits (quantum bits). A beautiful theory killed by an ugly fact.
"Experimental results by Jeffrey R. Reimers et al. 7, and others8, have shown that microtubules can neither sustain long-lived quantum states nor support quantum information processing associated with tubulin dimers as qubits. The whole set of original ideas by Hameroff and Penrose have been killed by Nature. There is no quantum coherence over the required time scale. Electronic motion in tubulin dimers is in the range of 10 fs to 30 ps, while Orch OR theory needs quantum coherence on the 25 ms timescale. Without a decoherence protection system, similar to the one used in photosynthesis, quantum computing in microtubules is not plausible."
http://mappingignorance.org/2015/06/17/o...ciousness/
"Hameroff’s ideas in the hands of Penrose have developed almost to absurdity. There is no justification to the incorporation in the Orch OR theory of consciousness the Diósi–Penrose scheme for objective reduction of the quantum state 34. The tentative role of gravity in quantum state reduction (the so-called wavefunction collapse), by means of the Schrödinger–Newton equation, only introduces noise in the presentation of the Orch OR theory and distracts from its most important points. I will not discuss here the ideas of Diósi–Penrose explaining quantum measurements by means of the instability of quantum superpositions involving significant mass displacements.
The prevalent scientific view is that consciousness emerged as a property of biological organisms during the course of evolution. It is a beneficial adaptation that confers a survival advantage to conscious species. However, Orch OR theory claims that consciousness is an intrinsic feature of the action of the non-computable universe. Because humans are capable of knowing the truth of Gödel-unprovable statements, the Penrose–Lucas argument states that human thought is necessarily non-computable 5. However, the computational power of a quantum computer is exactly the same as a classical one, as proved in 1985 by Oxford University physicist David Deutsch. Quantum Turing machines are equivalent to (Classical) Turing machines, even if certain NP problems can be made efficient using quantum algorithms. In my opinion, to recur to the ‘magic’ of non-computability is not the best route to a scientific solution of the problem of consciousness.
Microtubules are part of the cytoskeleton of all eukaryotic cells, however consciousness is the result of neurons in the cerebral cortex. Microtubules are cylindrical polymers of 25 nanometers in diameter made of tubulin dimers, composed of alpha and beta monomers in a helical pathway. In 1982, Hameroff and Watt 6 suggested that tubulin dimers act as dipoles representing information (classical) bits of information. Microtubules act like two-dimensional Boolean switching matrices in a cellular automata. Early versions of Orch OR theory proposed a quantum version of these ideas: tubulin dimers acting as qubits (quantum bits). A beautiful theory killed by an ugly fact.
"Experimental results by Jeffrey R. Reimers et al. 7, and others8, have shown that microtubules can neither sustain long-lived quantum states nor support quantum information processing associated with tubulin dimers as qubits. The whole set of original ideas by Hameroff and Penrose have been killed by Nature. There is no quantum coherence over the required time scale. Electronic motion in tubulin dimers is in the range of 10 fs to 30 ps, while Orch OR theory needs quantum coherence on the 25 ms timescale. Without a decoherence protection system, similar to the one used in photosynthesis, quantum computing in microtubules is not plausible."
http://mappingignorance.org/2015/06/17/o...ciousness/
Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble. - Joseph Campbell 
Militant Atheist Commie Evolutionist
Militant Atheist Commie Evolutionist
