The authors reason that they had to adapt an older version of the simulations code and hence did not have time to write everything from scratch. I think we have all been there.
Reproducibility doesn't imply that the underlying model assumptions were free from flaws. As Taleb pointed out in another talk, "It was wrong to use point-estimates for distributions with heavy tails"
The lead author Neil Ferguson was unfortunately caught up in another controversy where he left his house during lockdown measures to meet his "married lover". He had to resign from some of his positions but this shouldn't affect the research work he published.
So I don't think that has any bearing on the "thumbs up" report.
Coronavirus: Prof Neil Ferguson quits government role after 'undermining' lockdown.
It tells me that we are far away from being able to produce models that incorporate and aim to optimize a broader notion of human wellbeing.
Ferguson's model was always exponentially wrong, you can even say catastrophically wrong given the economic costs.
Nature still defending this catatrophy, interesting. So they also switched to non- science, supporting politics. The political angle is that they want to suppress extreme right-wing shifts as after the last such political/economical crisis 1930, caused by fatefully wrong political decisions. As they happened after and because of the Ferguson study.
