The Wikipedia article tries pretty hard to stick to neutral POV and I think does OK. It might undersell the "fraudulent science" aspect a little and oversell the "we meant well" but what it did teach me is that good science was done. I didn't realise how much value came out of it, around things like elevated CO2 and reef effects. I do suspect other kinds of experiment could have done that, but it's nice they at least achieved that. I'm glad the uni invested to turn it into a research facility albeit of a slightly different kind.
Some of the psychodrama is pretty torrid. People busting windows, mistaken belief of obligations to science, to their fellow scientists, to the project, to the truth. Bannon for goodness sake!! When they opened the airlocks for some convenience "we ran out of ramen and batteries" it became junky science fast. Why didn't they have some process around full disclosure for goodness sake? It sounds like nothing a decent airlock and double entry accounting on mass, gas, and energy can't deal with.
I am left suspecting double the size, quadruple the budget and with post biosphere#2 knowledge, massively more powerful batteries, PV, knowledge of materials science for things like outgassing, human and animal physiology, improvements in glass transmissiblity, you name it.. maybe third times the charm. That budget would have to be x10 for current costs, so scaled to 2023 dollars.
Finding people capable of engaging and remaining normies under scrutiny is eternally hard. Trueman show stuff. We're learning Antarctic base social dynamics have gone pretty shit in the last two decades, systemic bullying culture can become pervasive without a lot of checks. (According to some Australian media and administrative reviews)