The first clue about the Patent Pilot Program that I saw was a fluffy article about Du that came out after her ruling. She was quoted commenting in it that she enjoyed learning about "fish oil". I wasn't prompt looking at the article in detail, and didn't do additional research on the PPP until long after. BTW, the judicial system can provide competent advisors on various specialized topics, but that seems to be very rarely taken advantage of.
We had, essentially, an untrained novice getting her OJT on a case far out of her expertise with billions of dollars and many thousands (maybe millions, over a period of years) of lives at stake. No supervision or expert advice or review and a highly unreliable and ineffective appeal process. I assume someone who re-directed the case to Du probably thought it was such an obvious run of the mill frivolous challenge of a valuable patent that even a beginner could handle it (by upholding the longstanding patent).